York Guides

LEEDS florist Jackie Mara has never had an order like it before... thousands of blooms of multiple hues required for racing's showcase event.
by Howard Williamson

Leeds Today

Plus a side order of hundreds of Yorkshire roses for the VIPs coming to the Knavesmire for Royal Ascot in York.
Her team of 30 helpers from Daisy Chain will ferry vanloads of flowers to the event each day, arriving between 6 and 9 am.
They will decorate the Royal boxes (except the Queen's), bars and pedestals, and will colour-co-ordinate the racehorse owners' boxes in racing colours.
Jackie said: "We shall bring all sorts of flowers – orchids, roses, tropical plants and very extravagant blooms.
"It is very exciting and we are all looking forward to it. We will all be dressed in black – not in our finery because flowers can be a messy job.
"We have had to be checked by security and given photographic identity cards and our drivers have been told they must be away from the Knavesmire by 9am or their vans will be taken away by a bomb squad.
"Some of the displays will have to be made up in situ and so I shall be there every day doing those. I won't have time to watch the racing – I will be up to my eyeballs in work.
"But I might be able to sit down and enjoy it after 9am on Saturday."
Jackie, 31, has worked for nine years at Daisy Chain, which was launched by her mother 21 years ago and she has shops at Street Lane, Roundhay; Vicar Lane; Meanwood Road; and St James's Hospital.
"We were recommended to Royal Ascot by an events company in the south of England," she explained. "We have done a lot of work for them in the past when they came north.
"We have catered for cricket at Edgbaston, boat launches, York and Thirsk races and store openings, and we have done flowers for some very big weddings. But nothing like this before.
"We shall get an enormous delivery of blooms from our supplier in Holland. There will be even more than on Mother's Day, and that is saying something in itself."
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