|
|
Flower Confidential
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers
Hardback
, 306 pages
ISBN: 9781565124387 (1565124383)
Published by Algonquin Books
$23.95(US)
|
This title is currently out of stock, but you
might be able to order it from one of these
online retailers.
Buy It
|
about Flower Confidential
We buy more flowers a year than we do Big Macs, spending $6.2 billion annually. We use them to mark our most important events, to express sentiments that might otherwise go unsaid. And we demand perfection. So it’s no surprise that there is a $40 billion global industry devoted to making flowers flawless.
Amy Stewart takes us inside the flower trade—from the hybridizers, who create new varieties in the laboratory, to the growers, who produce flowers by the millions (often in a factory-like setting), to the Dutch auctioneers, who set the bar (and the price), and ultimately to the neighborhood florists orchestrating the mind-boggling demands of Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. There’s the breeder intent on developing the first blue rose; an eccentric horticultural legend who created the world’s most popular lily; a grower of gerberas of every color imaginable; and the equivalent of a Tiffany diamond: the “ Forever Young” rose.
Stewart explores the relevance of flowers in our lives and in our history, and in the process she reveals all that has been gained—and lost—by tinkering with nature.
about Amy Stewart
Amy Stewart is the author of The Earth Moved, which won the 2005 California Horticultural Society’s Writer’s Award, and From the Ground Up. Her essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Garden Design, Organic Gardening, and elsewhere. She has been featured on NPR, Good Morning America, and CBS Sunday Morning. She lectures throughout the country and lives in Eureka, California. Author Web site: www.amystewart.com
More about the author
Tour Info
|
|
|
