Flower Blog: Growing, the Trade, History and Places

Flowers are one of those subjects where the useful knowledge sits with the people who do it for a living and rarely gets written down. A grower knows when to cut a peony. A florist knows which stems will be short in February and why. This is where some of that gets written down.

Growing and Gardening

Growing flowers rather than buying them. Beds, borders, containers, what to plant for cutting and when to sow it.

2 posts

The Flower Trade

How the industry actually works, from the auction floor and the import chain to what a florist really makes on a bouquet.

1 post

History and Culture

Where the flowers we sell came from, who moved them around the world, and the stories that turned out to be myths.

1 post

Flowers and Places

Growing regions, flower markets and festivals, and why what is on the bench differs from one part of the country to another.

2 posts

Rows of small hardy annual seedlings in a bare autumn garden bed

Sow Hardy Annuals in Fall and They Flower Weeks Earlier

4 August 2026

Fall sown hardy annuals come through winter as small plants and flower earlier, taller and heavier than the same seed sown in spring.

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Greenhouses on a high plateau in the Colombian Andes at dawn

Why So Many American Flowers Are Grown in Colombia

28 July 2026

A large share of the flowers sold in the United States are grown near Bogota. The reasons are altitude, the equator, and a 1960s policy decision.

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Rows of trolleys stacked with cut flowers in a vast auction warehouse

How Flowers Get Here: The Clock Auction Most of Them Pass Through

21 July 2026

A huge share of the world's cut flowers move through Dutch auction halls that run backwards, in seconds, before dawn.

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Striped and flamed tulips arranged in a dark vase in old master style

Tulip Mania: Most of What You Have Heard Did Not Happen

14 July 2026

The Dutch tulip bubble is the standard cautionary tale about speculation. Historians have spent decades taking most of it apart.

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The dark window of a closed independent flower shop at dusk

One in Five Florist Websites Is Dead, and Some Now Point at Competitors

3 July 2026

We checked 27,151 florist websites twice on different days. Over five thousand were gone, and hundreds of lapsed domains now send customers elsewhere.

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A small backyard cutting bed of zinnias, cosmos and dahlias in summer

What to Plant in a Cutting Garden When You Only Have One Bed

24 June 2026

The plants that earn their space in a small cutting bed, the ones that do not, and why cut-and-come-again matters more than flower size.

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