What Columbia Road Flower Market is known for
Columbia Road Flower Market brings flower and plant traders together in London's East End, with stalls opening on Sundays. Buyers can browse the market along Columbia Road, where the trading community has a history reaching back to 1869. The focus is on plants and flowers for the home, with individual traders offering their own selections.
Columbia Road is a street of Victorian shopfronts in Bethnal Green, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. For one morning a week it disappears under flowers. The traders working it are a settled community rather than a rotating cast, and that shows in how the street runs itself.
The stalls are only half the reason to come. Columbia Road is one of very few streets in the country composed entirely of independent businesses, around sixty independent shops in all, and they open alongside the market.
Small art galleries sit next to vintage clothing dealers. English and Italian delis share the pavement with gardening suppliers and antique shops, and there are a good number of pubs and cafes between them.
The position helps. The road sits off Hackney Road at the edge of the City, with Shoreditch to the west and Brick Lane nearby, so it folds into a longer East End morning rather than standing as a trip of its own.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Flowers and plants at an East End Sunday market
N/A (market).
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