"When people have less money to spend, they tend to buy bread instead of flowers," sighs Mike Lansbergen, sales manager for a major Dutch producer of Barberton Daisies in Pijnacker-Nootdorp in the eastern Netherlands.

Lansbergen, whose company sells a million Barberton Daisies a week, said the global economic downturn was the second shock in a row for an industry still battling to recover from fast rising energy prices eating into budgets for transport and powering greenhouses.