Amy Stewart - Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers

Praise for Flower Confidential

Attains the uncommon rank of a non-fiction book that is equally as rewarding to the reader for its storytelling as it is for its content.... If books had genetic lines, Flower Confidential would carry its pedigree from Anthony Bourdains Kitchen Confidential and Michael Pollans The Botany of Desire.

USA Today

Engaging and scrupulously reported.

The New York Times Book Review

Eye opening.... Stewarts journey takes us down many paths, all connected by her own curiosity and highly readable prose... . [Flower Confidential] helps us grasp our modern world.

The Washington Post Book World

A quirky but entertaining book.... [Stewart] is the good-natured outsider occasionally dishing the dirt but usually celebrating the beautiful things that grow in it.

The Wall Street Journal

Stem-tastic.... [A] thorns-and-all expos of the blossom business.

Entertainment Weekly

The facts are surprising and intriguing. But it is the way nature writer Stewart packages them that makes Flower Confidential that rare nonfiction book that keeps you turning pages.

Scientific American

Fascinating.... A book thats bound to have a nice long shelf life.

Parade

A kind of gee-whiz, everything you never knew about the flower business book.

CBS Sunday Morning

[A] fascinating examination of the cut-flower industry.

Chicago Tribune

[Stewart] peeks into many of the worlds greenhouses and flower markets with a contagious enthusiasm for discovery.

The Miami Herald

Utterly fascinating.... A surprisingly fast-paced narrative.... [Stewart] has the soul of an unrestrained flower lover, the moxie of an investigative journalist.... Flower Confidential often enthralls but also opens eyes.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A gosh-how-interesting-I-never-thought-about-that kind of read.

The Christian Science Monitor

A concise, engaging, sometimes humorous expos of the worldwide multibillion-dollar cut flower industry.

E/The Environmental Magazine

This is not your mothers flower garden.... Stewart is an acute observer and intelligent writer, and Flower Confidential is a compelling read.

San Francisco Chronicle

Revelatory.... Informative at every level.

The Boston Globe

Stewart prompts shoppers to think hard about where their stems come from and how they got to market. The book may just get readers to see bouquets in a whole new light.

Los Angeles Times

A fascinating read for flower lovers, as well as people who are already fans of fair-trade coffee and organic produce.

Detroit Free Press

Theres plenty of high-tech and history in her well-researched (and annotated) accounts. But embedded in the industry trends and headlines are the gems that make the book worth buying and reading.

The Dallas Morning News

Like Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, and Diane Acker-man (Natural History of the Senses), Stewart is a storytelling journalist who uses people to illustrate her points. In Flower Confidential she details the triumphs and trials of nurserymen and hybridizers alike.

The San Diego Union Tribune

Just as Michael Pollans The Omnivores Dilemma has changed the way we look at our dinner, Amy Stewart hopes Flower Confidential will change the way we look at the flowers adorning our dinner table.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Once you start to look more closely at the flower business via Stewarts fascinating travels and research, a rose by any other name has either lost its scent entirely... or smells less sweet.

The Seattle Times

A new book every flower lover should read.... [Stewart] enlightens and entertains; she poses questions and offers opinions. And she does it with style.

Newsday

Amy Stewart is, as she puts it, a gardener and passionate consumer of flowers. Add fine writer to that list, too. All three her gardening knowledge, her passion, and her way with words come through in Flower Confidential.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

A glorious little book, informative but fun to read, personal and environmentally conscious but clear-eyed.

Bookslut

Fascinating.... Stewart brings her infectious curiosity to bear on the ins and outs of this $40 billion dollar global industry.

American Gardener

Filled with surprises and interesting facts. If you think buying flowers at an ecofriendly grocery store automatically means you are buying environmentally friendly blooms, think again.

Portland Tribune

Will have the most cantankerous capitalist thinking differently.

Fast Company

Flower Confidential

Also by Amy Stewart

The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable
Achievements of Earthworms

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden

AMY STEWART

The author wishes to thank the National Endowment
for the Arts for its generous support.

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2007 and 2008 by Amy Stewart. All rights reserved.

First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, March 2008.

Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2007.

Illustrations 2007 by Emma Skurnick.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Design by Tracy Baldwin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stewart, Amy.

Flower confidential / Amy Stewart. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-438-7 (HC)

1. Cut flower industry United States History. 2. Cut flower industry History. I. Title.

SB443.3.S74 2006

338.1'759660973 dc22 2006040092

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-603-9 (PB)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

To PSB

Flower Confidential

Whats the first thing a person does when you hand them flowers? Bob Otsuka, general manager of the San Francisco Flower Mart, asked me. To answer his own question, he pantomimed the gesture people make, bringing his hands to his face and breathing deeply.

They smell them, he said.

I sniffed the air, trying to catch the fragrance of rose or lily. Nothing. Sixty vendors sell cut flowers and plants out of this warehouse off Market Street, and as Bob and I walked the concrete floor a little after 5 a.m. neither one of us could find a blossom with a scent.

These flowers have all been bred for the industry, Bob said. Theyre selecting for color and size, and most of all for durability. You make some trade-offs when you do that. One of the things these flowers lose is scent.

But you know what? he said as we continued down the hall past carts loaded with buckets of hydrangeas and sunflowers. People still want to believe that flowers smell good. Ive seen somebody put their face right into a bunch of Leonides and say, Oh, they smell wonderful. But I know that rose. Its got gold petals with coppery edges you know the one I mean? It was bred for fall weddings. And it doesnt have any fragrance at all.