THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Gilding the Lily: Inside the Cut Flower Industry
Her extensive research is a must-read – this is not a book designed solely for people interested in growing flowers, or people who love the beauty of flowers in the house – it is a book that has a wider focus and is able to join the dots between first world consumption, the quest for a luxury item and what happens to an industry when a product (and the people who create it) become a commodity measured only in price.
Here are some key quotes from the book…
On breeding a rose for the cut flower market…
“7 years to design a rose in a laboratory and bring it to market. 6000 miles from a geneticist in Amsterdam to a farmer in Ecuador. 3 months of careful watching and waiting while the Valentines Day crop grows. 5 days, 2 airplanes, and a couple of trucks to get them to my house… they’d last a week in the vase.”
On the ephemeral nature of cut flowers…
“What amazed me most about this extraordinarily complex worldwide industry is this: they do it all for something as perishable and ephemeral as a flower. Airplanes fly in from Kenya and trucks drive from Holland and acres of greenhouses get built and billions of dollars change hands. All that for the alstroemerias you pick up at the grocery store as an afterthought…”
On seasonal vs trade flowers…
“The cut flower trade is all about this struggle between what is natural and unspoiled and what is mass produced and commercial.”
On flowers as a symbol of love…
“If the mixed bouquet of red roses and pink chrysanthemums designed by a national wire service at Valentines Day is indistinguishable from 1000’s of others delivered that same day all across the country, does that make the message it carries any less significant?”
On Gilding the Lily…
“The more time I spent around the flower industry, the more I wondered if we were expecting too much from them (the flowers). Who are we to take a symbol of perfection, purity, and love and try to improve upon it… are we, in fact, gilding the lilly?”
On the florists impact…
“I realised that one reason why customers have so little idea where flowers come from is that their only point of contact in the industry – the florist – may have little idea either.”
On an opinion she heard about organic flowers…
“Why have organic flowers when you don’t eat them?”
(And to that last comment we reply – because it is a choice of how we treat the landscape…)
So that is Gilding the Lily by Amy Stewart, which you can buy at a lovely low price here at Amazon.
And here is is Part Two.
Buxus the Norfolk Terrier In Modern Topiary Book
This is Buxus, our Norfolk Terrier, who I acknowledge in the acknowledgments of the book of Modern Topiary. The book of Modern Topiary can be read, for free, here. There you go. Buxus the dog on ‘doorstep duty’ at a friend’s house in Edinburgh. For those asking what he looked like!
What People Think Of Modern Topiary, The Book
Yesterday I put out the book – Modern Topiary – that I have spent the last six years writing. Download for free a pdf of Modern Topiary here. And what seems amazing to me, is that not only have people actually been reading it, but then responding to it. So below are a number of comments I have been sent from those who read it last night, and this morning…. “Brilliant read, exactly the right amount of info to take in and digest.” Rachel, a gardener “Just finished reading – absolutely brilliant!” Camilla (she shared with me lots she highlighted) …
Modern Topiary Book
Over the last six years I have been writing a book. It is called Modern Topiary and I have finally finished it, and now made it available for people to read. This is the blurb on the back…. This is the topiary book I wish I had when I began trying to clip plants into a shape others would consider beautiful. Split into two parts – the craft and then the art of topiary – I have tried to share everything I know. It’s not a long book. I hope this gives you the foundation for good technique, alongside ideas …