It’s sad, but not surprising, that cut flowers went the way of fresh food, turning what used to be a local enterprise into a $40 billion global network of industrial floriculture producing “factory flowers” every bit as uniform, unappetizing, and fake-looking as their gustatory counterparts.
But as Debra Prinzing explains in her new book The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers (St. Lynn’s Press, $17.95), the “slow flower” movement is catching up to “slow food,” bringing flowers back to local fields and, in season, into our homes. You see ample evidence of this already in the flowers sold at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Sam’s Club.
