Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart – book review

You know how sometimes you think you’ve done something but all you’ve done is thought about doing it? Well, I wrote this review long ago and was convinced that I’d posted it here. But now I find that it’s been sitting around in a more-or-less finished form all that time! Anyway… sorry folks, sorry Amy. Here it is.

Weddings, birthdays, at the party or in sadder times we say it with flowers. From the creation of new cut flower varieties to delivery to the door, Flower Confidential takes us through the whole breeding, growing and selling process that brings cut flowers from an idea in a breeder’s mind to the vase on your table. A friend said that sounded dull. Not if Amy Stewart’s at the controls.

Her sparky style, her humor and her reliance on conversations with people in the trade, make for a lively read. By getting to know these plant breeders, flower growers, people at markets and stores – and rummaging around in the statistics - she’s able to reveal what really goes on; the book is packed with intriguing facts and stories.

Did you know that Americans buy four billion stems a year (and that’s a conservative estimate)? And there’s the story of the “blue” rose, produced by a subsidiary of a Japanese liquor company, that’s really violet. There are the legal battles over the ‘Star Gazer’ lily, and it turns out that Ecuador, which produces some of the finest flowers in the world, has almost no flower shops. Her account of a Valentine’s Day in a city flower shop is a reminder that the emotions that come with giving flowers to a loved one will only blossom if the system that brings them to the door on that hectic day is effortlessly efficient.

This is a great read, which is all the more impressive considering the wealth of research behind that flowing style.

Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart is published by Algonquin Books.

You can order it in North America here.
You can order it in Britain here.