Jedburgh florist couldn't believe it when her business was named the best in Scotland

More than 700 finalists and their guests converged on the venue for Scotland’s Business Awards, which had been postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Sarah, who took over Stems of Jedburgh in 2011 from Diana Cairns, had already won the regional honour as best florist in the Borders.

But she had little expectation of clinching the national gong, with stiff competition from bigger businesses across the country.

She said: "I couldn’t believe it when they said my name, there were some big florists up for the award. One of the other nominees was Flowers by Karen of Kilmarnock, which is a huge company, and I actually expected her to win.

"A couple of years ago I decided there was no point trying to compete with supermarkets, luckily we don’t have a huge one near by, so I decided to try and create slightly different arrangements and use top-grade flowers and that has provided dividends because we have been much busier.

"One of the things we pride ourselves on is customer service. My staff are great, they are very approachable and they take time to speak to the customers and if they have got questions we don’t mind answering them or helping them make their own arrangements at home and we’re not too stuck in our ways and we don’t mind passing on information to our customers. When you get recognition like this you realise that you must be doing something right.”

Sarah imports most of her flowers from Holland, through the Dutch auctions, and her stock comes from all parts of the world.

She added: “We stock a lot. I’ve been into florists where they have just got six vases of flowers but we manage to rotate ours quite a lot because we have a nicer cooler to keep them all in good condition as well, so that when people come in they always have a good selection to choose from. It takes a lot of work with the maintenance but it’s worth it.”