Meet the mother and daughter team running a successful florist's and gift shop in family footsteps

And helping her to create beautiful bouquets and arrangements every day is her own mother, Vanessa Sweeney.

The business started five years ago when Heather decided to follow her childhood dream of becoming a shop owner.

“I was working in an office when I was 19/20. My nan passed away from cancer. She was like a second mum to me and my best friend.

“I was working in customer service and with customer complaints and I realised I didn’t want to do it any more.

“When I was little my dream was to open a shop. I saw there was a vacant shop in Chenevare Mews.

“I went to school in Kinver and knew the area very well so I decided to take the plunge,” she explains.

Heather originally started out running a sustainable gift shop from her premises in June 2019.

Within nine months of starting the business she was forced to close due to lockdown.

During this period she kept the business afloat by offering a home delivery service.

Branching out to also offer dried and later fresh flowers, following feedback from customers, seemed like a natural next step for the shop.

“I’ve always loved flowers. My nan used to arrange flowers and was a member of Stourbridge Floral Art Club,” says Heather.

“We added dried flowers about three years ago and had a few weddings booked.

“It gave us the confidence to do fresh flowers and it was the best decision,” explains Heather, who is joined in the shop by Toby the dachshund.

It’s proven to be a hugely successful move with the mother and daughter team taking care of the floral arrangements and bouquets for weddings every year. They have 45 in the diary for 2024.

“It’s grown through word of mouth. Every wedding we do, we get another booking from someone who has seen the flowers,” says Vanessa, who joined the business three years ago.

“The plan was always for me to retire from the corporate life and join Heather.

“The business grew so much that I was able to retire early.

“Mum enabled us to work together and she would have loved that. It’s just sad that she didn’t get to see it,” she adds.

Heather, aged 25, says her grandmother would have been delighted by the tribute to Winnie and Olive.

“Winnie was very creative and artistic and Olive was an expert businesswoman, who was still working at 85,” she says.

“There are four generations of strong women and values inspiring what we do,” adds Vanessa.

The shop specialises in sustainable British grown flowers and sources stems from local farms including Bonterre CIC, a not for profit community project, near Worcester.

During the winter months, flowers come from farms located further afield such as Cornwall while one per cent of the annual stem count is ethically sourced from European growers to help meet customer demand.

“Our ethos is local first then British. It’s the same with our gifts, we stock a lot of local makers and artists,” says Vanessa, aged 57.

Among the flowers currently in stock are sweet peas, scented stocks, sweet rocket, corncockle, allium, tulips, ranunculus and peonies. “We never know what we’re going to get from our growers, so when the flowers arrive, it’s always magical because they are so beautiful,” says Vanessa.

They also make bespoke arrangements for funerals, taking the time to talk to families about their wishes and their loved ones’ interests.

“We also pick from people’s gardens if the person who died loved flowers and their garden. It’s such a privilege to be able to do this for people,” says Heather.

Inspired by her grandmother, Heather is committed to recycling, upcycling and sustainability. “There’s quite a strong eco-friendly presence in Kinver,” she says. Customers will drop off bags of old jam jars, newspapers, magazines and fleece packaging which all get reused.

“We take the fleece to Bonterre where it’s used on the farm to suppress the weeds,” says Vanessa.

“We don’t like waste,” says Heather, who also offers eco-friendly refills. “If we get any fresh flower breakages, we will dry them out and use them in our dried flower arrangements.”

They both enjoy being part of the community in Kinver and providing a personal service.

“We like a more personal approach. We like to build relationships with our brides, families and our customers,” says Heather.

“Kinver is a thriving village and really bucking the trend,” says Vanessa.

See winnieandolive.co.uk and facebook.com/winnienolive.