Hi Jlou!
It would really help you to try a few different reeds, as BM says. The three styles, roughly, are French Cut, American Cut & Classical Cut.
French cut is commonly used for Jazz music - reeds such as Marca Jazz, Vandoren ZZ, Superial DC's, Rico Jazz Selects & Rico Royals are all worth a try if you want a responsive complex sound, which can be bright. American cut is generally more suited to Rock and Pop music, with quite a solid, percussive sound - reeds such as Vandoren Java & V16, Rico Orange, LaVoz etc. Classical cut is for Classical music and includes Vandoren Traditional, Marca Superiere and others.
www.rapidreeds.com sell the Rico Royals and Rico Orange in packs of 3, and
www.reeds-direct.co.uk have Marca Jazz and Hemke Reeds in boxes of 5 if you do not want to pay out too much. A couple of these would give a good introduction to reed styles and 2 hardness should be fine to start with. Do look on the Alexander Superials website to reed up about reed preparation, which is helpful reading and will help your reeds play at their best and last longer.
A number of reed types are good but packs of 10 reeds are always going to take you towards £20 or so, so having some smaller packs may be helpful. As your sound develops you will probably gradually find reeds which feel "just right", which is where a lot of us have got to, including the "synthetic" brigade.
Hope this helps
Kind regards
Tom
Flugel wise you could always try the Bauhaus Walstein Bronze ones advertised at
www.woodwindandbrass.co.uk for approx £375.