Sustainable Floristry: How did we get here?

A list of questions to make or break your day

How many of us have thought: “As long as it lasts for the bride/the editorial/ the aisle/the picture/the hour…”? I heard these words this week at a sustainable floristry event in London and though I’m guilty myself, I had to wonder:

How has this thinking created an unsustainable floral culture?

Not only is a garden-to-vase style a privilege of the few, (snipping whole sprays and arching branches of roses is more a testament to landedness than ecological economy), using ephemeral flowers for editorial work also signals largesse: a kind of —‘oh I’ll just run out to my garden and grab another/replace what wilts’ style of thought.

Being at Chelsea, seeing the florals try to last through a week of sun, rain and wind, the juxtaposition niggled and I felt some shame for calling the style of work I undertook in my last book sustainable simply because the flowers weren’t flown but grown by me (luxury of time/space) and I didn’t use foam. But did they last long? Only if cosseted.

I will never support the use of floral foam and it’s wonderful to see the RHS ban it from the show (if not Chelsea in Bloom), but did I grow sterile flowers and toss every tulip bulb after it bloomed? Did I pour peat-based potting mix into bins and force corms from Israel and then call them ‘local flowers’. Yes. Perhaps in Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style I helped nudge the dial on the diversity of plant options that might be available to florists, in a kind of Spry ‘open to your eyes to all forms of beauty’ way, but I truly believe we have a long way to go in our thinking. I’d like to see us choose flowers that go the distance in figurative terms if not geographically.

Here’s my working text on ‘Footprint’ for my upcoming book. Let me know what you think.

Carbon emissions have long been the focus of environmental campaigns, leading to exhortations to buy flowers that are ‘grown not flown’, ‘local’, or regionally produced. Landedness has also come to define the sustainable floristry and garden-to-vase movements, sadly, but many things contribute to the carbon footprint of flowers beyond travel, namely the level of mechanization involved in production, the type of flower being grown, vase life, soil mediums, and/or the materials used to package flowers and plants as they reach the consumer.

So what is a sustainable flower?

Here are some questions you can ask yourself: