Poinsettias
In the carefully controlled temperature of the greenhouse, the sea of perfect poinsettias stretches away as far as the eye can see, the layers of leaves gradually turning from green to red.
In a few weeks time they will be on the shelves in Sainsbury's, nicely in time for Christmas.
Until then they remain in the care of growers at Roundstone Nurseries near Chichester, West Sussex, who have nurtured them from tiny seedlings imported from Germany three months ago.
The 20,000 poinsettias which surround despatch supervisor Lina Veliuoniene (correct) in this picture are just a small part of the 150,000 being grown for the supermarket in the nursery's giant greenhouses.
'The trick,' says nursery manager David Loy, 'is to grow them all to the same height and the same width and the same colour at the same time.They are social plants and like to be in a big group.'
Each poinsettia is grown in a four inch pot - first close together with leaves touching and then gradually moved apart so that they are free to grow. The temperature in the greenhouse is carefully controlled with the young seedlings enjoying a 20C temperature which is gradually reduced to 15C. The nurserymen regularly pinch out shoots from the plants to make sure each one has a regulation six layers of leaves.
Rather than use pesticides to control white fly which would otherwise blight the poinsettias, the nursery employs thousands of tiny parasite wasps - each one measuring just one sixteenths of an inch long - which lay their eggs in the white fly larvae to destroy them.
The nursery staff patrol the plants twice a day, making sure they are not too dry. But overwatering would be a disaster. Although British growers face increased energy costs and fierce competition from Europe, Mr Loy says a sense of patriotism means that home grown poinsettias have become more important. 'British grown is certainly very important to Sainsbury's,' he said.