Psst! Get the Inside Scoop on the Cut Flower Industry!

The Four Seasons Garden Club and Washington Gardener Magazine are co-hosting a book talk by author Amy Stewart: Flower Confidential. It will take place Wednesday, February 7, from 6:30-8:45 pm at the West End Neighborhood Library, 1101 24th Street NW WDC ~ near the Foggy Bottom metro. This event is absolutely free and is open to all.
You may be familiar with Amy through the blog she shares with three other highly-opinionated garden writers, GardenRant, or her previous garden books, The Earth Moved and From the Ground Up. When Amy said she was coming to DC on her publicity tour for this book, I jumped at the chance to arrange for her to give a talk to a local garden club. I knew this would be a win-win-win situation all around. Plus, I finally get to meet her in person and dish the dirt as it were. Here is a little bit about her book from her publicity materials:
Flower Confidential is an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes look at the flower industry and how it has sought--for better and worse--to achieve perfection.
Does it matter that a bouquet of roses travels halfway around the world before it arrives at your supermarket or florist? Or that growers force tulips to bloom in December? Are we being tricked when a scientist engineers a lily that doesn’t shed pollen?
For over a century, hybridizers, geneticists, farmers, and florists around the world have worked to invent, manufacture, and sell flowers that are bigger, brighter, and sturdier than anything nature could provide. Almost any flower, in any color, is for sale at any time of the year.
Amy Stewart travels the globe to take us inside this dazzling world. She tracks down scientists intent on developing the first genetically modified blue rose; an eccentric horticultural legend who created the world’s most popular lily (the ‘Star Gazer’); a breeder of gerberas of every color imaginable; and an Ecuadorian farmer growing exquisite, high-end organic roses that are the floral equivalent of a Tiffany diamond. She sees firsthand how flowers are grown and harvested on farms in Latin America, California, and Holland. (It isn’t always pretty.)
The library meeting room where we will gather fits 150 people total and we anticipate a very good turnout. Get there early to get a good seat!