Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Why I grow cut flowers

I tend to bang on about the ethics of cut flower production very rarely - I prefer to stress the seasonality and freshness of my flowers rather than pointing out the way that most cut flowers on sale in flower shops, supermarkets and garage forecourts are grown, treated and transported.
Over the past couple of months there has been a lot of coverage in the press about working conditions in and land pollution caused by flower farms - particularly in Kenya which is fast becoming the country where most of the UK's come from.
I thought that it might be useful to have a few links so that anyone who is interested can see how products that are essentially treats - usually bought as tokens of love or to make a house more of a home - are damaging the environment.
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,1774214,00.html
http://money.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,1709448,00.html
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200107/hidden.asp
http://www.pelicannetwork.net/flowers.noroses.htm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/main.jhtml?xml=/gardening/2003/06/14/ggerm14.xml
Growing all flowers locally isn't going to be a full answer to the problem - there is however a small market in fair trade flowers - still not addressing the pesticide pollution, the airmiles or the heavy metal treatments but at least a start. Florists SHOULD be able to source fair trade flowers, they SHOULD also be able to tell you the country of origin - NB the "Holland" on a supermarket bunch of flowers refers to the packing department, not where the actual flowers were grown.

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