Growing, buying, arranging, and everything else worth knowing
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.
2 posts
Growing flowers rather than buying them. Beds, borders, containers, what to plant for cutting and when to sow it.
Read Growing and Gardening
6 posts
How the industry actually works, from the auction floor and the import chain to what a florist really makes on a bouquet.
Read The Flower Trade
1 post
Where the flowers we sell came from, who moved them around the world, and the stories that turned out to be myths.
Read History and Culture
2 posts
Growing regions, flower markets and festivals, and why what is on the bench differs from one part of the country to another.
Read Flowers and Places
3 November 2026
The angled cut on flower stems isn't about surface area. It's about keeping the cut end off the bottom of the vase where it would seal shut.
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13 October 2026
The shape of a florist's bucket is not arbitrary. The flared top, the height, and the narrow base all solve specific problems with how cut flowers stay alive.
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22 September 2026
Grocery store flowers arrive in plastic sleeves for reasons that have nothing to do with display. The wrapping protects the product through a supply chain not
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15 September 2026
Florists remove most foliage from cut flowers before they sell them. The reasons are practical, not aesthetic, and they matter for vase life.
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12 August 2026
The wholesale flower trade sorts stems into grades by length, and a few centimeters can double the price. Here's what actually drives that difference.
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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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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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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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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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