Where'd that gorgeous flower come from? Your backyard garden or the florist? If it's the florist, Amy Stewart has some tales to tell. In her book "Flower Confidential," Stewart takes a global trip to uncover the secrets of the flower trade.
Like jewelry, art and other non-functional luxury items, flowers are serious business. They just add to and sweeten up a place, and have for centuries.
Hosted by the Sawtooth Botanical Garden, Stewart will talk about the book at the Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 13. Wine and hors d' oeuvres will be offered during the reception.
Stewart's last book, "The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms," won the California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award in 2005.
Stewart lives in Eureka, Calif., "up the street from Arcata where the Sun Valley Bulb Farm is located."
"One of the largest growers of cut flowers in the U.S., Sun Valley now has four farms in California," she said. "There was an open house and I went just because I thought a day at a flower farm would be nice. I was very surprised at how high-tech it was, how mechanized and how flowers are a mass-produced commodity. It was fascinating. It was a reality check."
From this germ of an idea, Stewart began investigating the story of Leslie Woodriff, the visionary behind the wildly popular Stargazer Lily.
"It's not a story that has even been told before," she said. "I did some primary research and interviews with family, looked through archives and files. No one in the horticulture world really knows the story. It's always a joy to find an original story. I was so intrigued."
From there, Stewart said, "I cast as wide a net as I could to catch one or two persons in every segment or niche of this business."
"Flower Confidential" is divided into three parts. In the "Breeding" section she covers the way flowers are genetically manipulated for scent, color and for lasting power by tinkering with nature.
To check out growers, she travels to the Netherlands and Ecuador.
One of my favorite set pieces in the book is after she's been to a rose farm in Ecuador. She leaves with one giant rose that surpasses her height. The sight of the woman and her one enormous, perfect rose stops people in their tracks. To their amazed stares, she simply responds "Quito," the name of the area where they are grown.
Here's another fact that Stewart found in her research and discusses in the "Selling" section: The sympathy business of flowers is suffering. But as rituals change so does the market. Much of this is due to outpatient surgeries, shorter hospital stays, memorial services instead of funerals and obituaries that say "in lieu of flowers" and mention a charity instead.
When Stewart visits on Wednesday, she will bring a slide show to "tell the story visually," she said. "The visuals are incredible. I'll take them through the journey behind the scenes and a few stories that didn't make it in the book for whatever reason. There's a journey that flowers make. They are quite well traveled."
Stewart often speaks to horticultural groups where there are gardeners in audience.
"There's an understanding of what you go through to grow flowers and here it is on a different scale," she said. "It's about precision and automation. In some ways it's nothing like gardening.
"'Flower' Confidential' is what happens when you combine nature and money. What do you get? You get a $40 billion industry based on the reproductive organs of plants."
Amy Stewart will speak at the Gail Severn Gallery. Photo by
