Our love affair with flowers has come at a cost, Flora Culture author says | Canada Voices

Flowers are among humanity’s oldest obsessions. They inspire art, perfume our rituals, feed pollinators, heal the sick and connect us to the natural world in ways both practical and profound.

Few people understand this relationship better than British Columbia-based writer, photographer and designer Christin Geall, whose career has been devoted to studying and celebrating plants. Her research and outlook was nurtured by the professor and ethnobotanist Nancy Turner when she was a student at the University of Victoria.

Yet Geall is no romantic idealist. In her new book, Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World, she argues that our love affair with flowers has come at a cost. While flowers remain essential to life on Earth, the global floriculture industry, worth an estimated US$58-billion, has grown largely without scrutiny, creating environmental, economic and ethical consequences most consumers never consider.

Part cultural history, botanical exploration and manifesto, Flora Culture is organized as an “abecedarium”– a fancy word for a collection of more than 80 alphabetically arranged essays that blend personal stories with insights from growers, scientists and designers to reveal the hidden systems that bring flowers from field to vase. The book is a visual feast, and Geall shows flowers that are mostly grown sustainably, and when they’re not, she uses stock images to discuss issues such as the use of dyes or peat (banned in countries such as the U.K. but still not regulated here in Canada, the world’s largest exporter of peat).

Some of the most striking examples come from her examination of the industry’s vast global supply chain. In the essay, “Cold Chain: Plants on the Move,” Geall traces the refrigerated networks that transport cut flowers around the world. The scale is astonishing: a single Boeing 747 cargo plane can carry roughly 1.65 million roses, while Miami receives an estimated 22 million flowers every day. The United Kingdom imports about 90 per cent of its cut flowers despite its long-standing identity as a nation of gardeners.

For Geall, these facts raise a larger question. If consumers have begun to think critically about where their food comes from – embracing local, seasonal and organic choices – shouldn’t we do the same with flowers?

Flowers are far more than decorative luxuries, says Geall. They sustain us all. Embracing them for the ecological foundation they provide, she adds, may be the first step toward reconsidering what a bouquet really means in a rapidly changing world.

The Globe and Mail recently talked to the Victoria-based writer about how horticulture needs to change, the pitfalls of home gardens and how we can all make better choices when it comes to the flowers we pick.

Why is it necessary to challenge our relationship with plants?

Flowers are paramount to the survival of all species, including our own. Without pollination we wouldn’t have food. The biodiversity we rely on is directly connected to them. Our love of flowers and our desire to be close to them has, across cultures and for millennia, created both landscapes and livelihoods. My quest to understand how we might live with them in greater harmony is the reason I wrote this book.

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In the introduction you write that perceptions around horticulture and floristry need to change. Can you give an example?

Let’s start with the world’s top 20 commercial-cut flowers. These include roses, carnations, gerbera daisies, lilies, tulips, daffodils and chrysanthemums. Roses alone make up 41 per cent of the global flower trade. The minute a rose is cut, it has to rely on stored sugars. The goal of the global floral industry is to get that rose to the consumer within 24 to 48 hours. One way of lowering the rate of respiration, when a plant exhales carbon dioxide and water, is to chill it.

Is that where the cold chain comes in?

The number of flowers travelling daily by air is staggering. Every week about 400 tons of flowers leave Nairobi. The Netherlands imports botanicals from approximately 60 countries. Needless to say the world’s cold chains, whether food or flowers, run on petroleum. Not good.

We’re told to buy flowers that are grown not flown. Is buying local the panacea to all that ails the floral industry?

I feel guilty saying this, because a lot of flower growers are working hard to get local flowers out. But when I see how they’re often grown in and under plastic, or in plastic crates filled with peat-based soil mix, I wonder is this really sustainable? I’ve changed how I garden. I’ve shifted my cut flower garden to grow more perennial shrubs in Victoria, like snow berry and red flowering currants. I support more farmers’ markets and I now try to grow less food myself.

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That seems at odds with the explosion in home gardens since the pandemic. Are you saying growing your own food and/or flowers is a bad thing?

It is not a “bad” thing. But backyard gardens are quite consumptive in terms of energy, water, and non-biodegradable materials. For instance, a recent study in the journal Nature Cities notes that backyard gardens often have higher carbon footprint than adjacent farms. Consider the infrastructure home gardeners need: raised beds built of timber or metal, hardscaping with concrete, landscape fabric, gravel, transported stone, paving with bricks, installing irrigation, building trellising, installing lighting, buying pots, building greenhouses or plastic tunnels, buying tools, erecting fences. I could go on. The study found that urban farms, such as allotments or community gardens, were far more climate-friendly than individual backyard gardens. Cut-flower farming is similar. When next tempted to build a raised bed, go to the farmers’ market.

Given that, I imagine you’re not a fan of the bedding plants, sold in plastic packs, at nurseries?

Bedding plants are licensed, controlled and meant to be disposable. We buy these summer annuals because we’re told we need all this colour. This is not sustainable. Gardeners have been given a lot of freedom because they’re out there digging in the earth. Don’t get me wrong. Gardening is good for us, both physically and mentally, and it helps people connect with nature. However, the problem is that a lot of what people are connecting with isn’t actually natural. We need to learn more about the native plants in our communities. We need to do less in our gardens sometimes, not more. We need to focus on more biodiverse gardens, so less paving, less lighting, less infrastructure.

What is the message you hope readers take away?

We’ve come far in our thinking around food. We support local growers, celebrate regional cuisine and buy organic. I’d like to see similar attention paid to ornamental horticulture and floriculture. These are complex industries in desperate need of reform, and we know from the food industry that change is possible with government support and consumer education. Almost everyone loves flowers and millions of us garden: How hard can change be?

This interview has been edited and condensed.