Gardening: The best bloomin' boozers in town: Anna Pavord meets some of the capital's publicans who take as much pride in their floral displays as they do in their liquid refreshments

BY WAY of consumer research, I asked a hard-drinking friend if he knew any pubs in his area that had good flowers. 'Flowers?' he said incredulously. 'Flowers? I don't go to pubs for bloody flowers]' How do Gallup and MORI deal with such intractable material?

His London drinking patch evidently does not include the area around East Dulwich where, at 196 Peckham Rye, Peter Key and his wife keep the Clock House - a pub so dripping in flowers that even the most single-minded alcoholic would notice them.

Hanging baskets sway ponderously all along the wooden screen that marks the boundary with the pavement. There are double hanging baskets on either side of the entrance and more up the side of the pub where there are benches.

Flowers pour out of the wooden haycart that sits in the yard. Huge bushes of white daisies are the centrepieces of the wooden half-barrels lined up along the fence. The flowers in the window-boxes block out much of the daylight - no bad thing in a pub.

Why did Mr Key put on this extravagant display? 'It's great for business,' he said. 'The regulars love it. It catches the eye, gets punters through the door. People notice the flowers when they go by on the bus. Then they come back to check us out. I can't understand why all pubs don't do it.'

But few publicans are such besotted gardeners as Mr Key, who has not an inch of real earth in Peckham Rye to call his own. He grows his plants in Gro-bag compost, 'the cheapest way to buy the stuff', and starts planting in April. 'I get nagged rotten by the customers. You get two sunny days in March and they're asking where the flowers are. I've been doing it now for about 16 years.'

He buys his plants wholesale at the Covent Garden market in Vauxhall, and reckons to spend about pounds 1,000 on his display each year. 'The plants you buy are pushed on so hard, though, they take time to settle. These white daisies, for instance: they fell to bits soon after I'd planted them. I was going to get rid of them, but gradually they pulled themselves round, settled down and started growing more naturally.'

Pink, white and purple form the colour theme at the Clock House, and a trailing magenta petunia is Mr Key's star performer. 'I like to do something a bit different each year. A customer put me on to verbenas this year. Good plants. I bought about a hundred of those Swiss geraniums, too. But they are quite tender. I lost a lot.'

Mr Key gets up at 7am every day to water the pots and hanging baskets. In very hot weather the baskets each get a bucketful of ice, which takes at least two hours to melt, keeping the compost cool and moist as it does so. All his containers are fed several times a week with Phostrogen. He is thinking about an automatic irrigation system for next year. He has had the quote: pounds 1,350.

The window-boxes are wooden, made to measure. Each year the insides are painted with car underseal. 'It preserves them quite well. We've had these for 10 years now.'

Variegated geraniums are the centrepieces in these, with billows of grey helichrysum, verbena, lobelia, brachyscome, fuchsias. 'I avoid busy lizzies. They need too much water.'

Around the hanging baskets, the barrels and Mr Key's beloved haycart are chains sturdy enough to secure the Crown Jewels. Had there been trouble? Yes, someone had stolen half his hanging baskets a month or so ago. 'Was I mad? I was raving] Twelve weeks' work bringing them all on. And they smashed up all the flowers trying to get them away . . .' The memory is too painful.

Liam Murphy at the Hillgate in Hillgate Street, Notting Hill Gate, west London, has had a similar experience: two boxes and a wheelbarrow full of flowers were taken from outside the pub's side entrance. But a neighbour saw them go and phoned the police, who tracked them to a restaurant in south London where they had been bolted to the pavement.

Would Mr Murphy care to collect his possessions? No, Mr Murphy told the police, he would like the thieves to bring them back. And they did.

That is the only trouble Mr Murphy has ever had with his flowers. 'But this is a good area, a residential area. I have very nice neighbours. I like to present the pub well, as much for them as for me. This year I think I have excelled myself.'

There are 70 tubs, hanging baskets and window-boxes round the Hillgate, which sits on a corner, giving Mr Murphy extra scope. Like Mr Key, he goes for petunias in a big way, but he also succeeds with busy lizzies, which grow in two huge hanging balls at first-floor level. 'How many plants in each ball?' he asked me, with the air of a man nursing a happy secret. 'Two dozen?' I ventured cautiously. 'Two dozen be damned,' he said. 'Seventy] Seventy in each one]'

The collection of plants here is more eclectic than at the Clock House, though the latter's standard of maintenance is higher. At the Hillgate you will find spiraea, lots of ivies, argyranthemums, aucuba and hanging baskets dripping with begonias.

Chempak is Mr Murphy's secret weapon. 'Fertilising is the whole answer,' he says. 'The containers are watered every day, even if it's raining, and fed every two weeks. I had an automatic watering system once, but now it doesn't work.'

He, too, is up early every morning to look after the flowers. Now that his pub (like Mr Key's) is open from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, there is not much spare time for titivating tubs.

Generally, he finds country pubs much inferior to town pubs with regard to flowers. People in town pubs try harder. They have to, to overcome what are often bleak surroundings. Like Mr Key, Mr Murphy feels that his flowers pay for themselves several times over, and he spends twice as much on his as does Mr Key.

But pub flowers are about more than big business. The publicans who put on these show-stopping displays do it because they enjoy it. Mr Murphy confesses he cannot keep away from a garden centre. Mr Key's wife says he is far better tempered in summer when he can get out among his hanging baskets.

When landlords change, so do pubs. The Andover Arms in Aldensley Road, Hammersmith, west London, won a Best Bloomin' Pub trophy for its display a couple of years ago. Now not a shred of lobelia nor a wisp of geranium are to be seen about the place. But in Islington, north London, Eddie Hickey is still winning horticultural prizes for the Prince Edward at 38 Parkhurst Road, and in south-west London you can drink among flowers in the Ship (41 Jews Rog, Wandsworth, SW18) and the Ghide Swan (25 Old Palace Lane, Richmond, Surrey).

Other London pubs where you get flowers with your beer include the Cross Keys, Lawrence Street, SW3, the Australian, Milner Street, SW3, the Star, Belgrave Mews West, SW3, and the Spaniards Inn, Spaniards Lane, NW3.

(Photograph omitted)