In the run-up to Mother’s Day 1950, Winifred Fovargue Hadley took her heart in her hands and made the biggest decision of her life: To start her own business and unleash a frenetic foray into female entrepreneurship at a time when this really wasn’t the done thing. What followed were four decades of highs and lows, triumphs and blows and a succession of barely believable fables of entrepreneurial fortitude and extreme resilience. 

In this book, Tom Hadley captures slices of life from his grandmother’s flower shop in the West Midlands and distils them into a formula for success, serenity and slow-baked happiness. The Floral Box Formula is a high-energy, hybrid affair: Leadership guide meets collection of life-affirming short stories with vibrant vignettes of local history, sporting interludes and corroborating missives from present-day business leaders.

In an age of information overload, AI omnipotence and screen-time omnipresence, the ‘old school’ edicts and values that infuse The Floral Box Formula are a powerful reminder of some timeless truths. Tom offers up a tightly-packed bouquet of pointers for dealing with life‘s many challenges (and somehow coming up smelling of roses!) that are as relevant today as they were when the rickety green door of The Floral Box first swung open.