I have spent my life with flowers. Firstly, it was growing them, sometimes a truly tedious occupation as a cemetery gardener aged 15 in 1961. Imagine being in the greenhouse, pricking out thousands of tiny seedlings, one after the other, and potting them up. The crock pots, of course, needed washing; a winter job. My back ached after weeks of washing old soil off the pots. This was why, when offered a move to the crematorium, I did not hesitate. However, floral wreaths left at funerals then became a daily issue. Which wreaths were now old enough to be disposed of? None of them could be recycled. They had to be ‘skipped’ and taken to landfill which was wasteful and costly. The anthers of lilies scattered staining pollen and the chrysanthemum heads exploded, sending swathes of petals everywhere. Hours were spent sweeping up petals to avoid people slipping. Wasps, hiding in them, stung me. You can imagine how these commercial flowers took on a new perspective and none too favourable.
The cost of all those wreaths, dozens at some funerals, troubled me. Were they a pointless ritual? How could something so universal mean anything when everybody did it? However, I was not paid to think or to express an opinion. The wreath, you see, was an extremely lucrative ritual for so many businesses. There was a financial advantage in promoting flowers. In those early days, most of the flowers were grown in the UK or Holland and were, to some degree, local. However, all that was to change.
As air travel increased, so more and more flowers were imported. Flower nurseries in the UK lost all their business. Much of this was a response to safety issues. The use of chemicals to grow flowers, control pests and induce flowering at the right market time, grew incrementally. In the UK, workers had to be protected from these chemicals but in places like Africa and South America, firms could be more casual. Reports increased of women aborting after being put into greenhouses too soon after chemical treatments. Also, drugs started to be concealed in flower consignments flown to Europe. To a horticulturist the flowers lost all their beauty and innocence as they became a mere commodity. Worse was to come. Genetic changes were developed to create a marketable rose, with a thornless, straight stem. The rose epitomises romance but there is nothing romantic about its production. Did anybody notice that many flowers lost their scent? Even freesias looked and felt like a freesia but without their glorious scent were never, to me, the same again.
My horticultural love of flowers, as you can imagine, was severely tested. I had to explain to my wife that I would never buy her any imported flowers because supermarket flowers and florist’s flowers are an environmental and social disaster.
Even knowing these things, I still make mistakes. When my mother-in-law died, we asked the florist not to use any hothouse flowers. However, she used lilies. I should have realised that the word, hothouse, was no longer meaningful to them. The floristry trade no longer understands such distinctions. Flowers, you see, are just flowers and bear no relationship to seasons. Many are oblivious to where they come from or what environmental or social cost they carry.
Flowers grown in UK nurseries and in gardens are another issue altogether. Daffodils from the South West still speak of spring and I happily buy them. That said, real flowers have to mean more than a cheap buy in Aldi. In my garden, bees and butterflies are my focus because the blooms, to them, are a matter of life and death. Such flowers have a spiritual depth. Indeed, our ability to grow flowers specifically to help bees and butterflies is a privilege given to us by nature. The herbaceous border I created in my garden last spring looked pathetic; the tiny overwintered plants appeared hardly alive. Yet, months later, bees, hover flies, butterflies and even a dragonfly visited every day. It’s that relationship that makes my heart sing.
Likewise, to find flowers out in the countryside is a similar joy. In part this is because they appear where nature dictates, without greenhouses or chemicals. I can now recognise mountain pansies from a distance in the hills around my Peak District home. They have a specific yellow and often grow on the mounds of old lead workings. However, they are small and often very insignificant. The ability to actually see the flowers is a skill in itself and needs practice. It is a skill that the ancient foragers’, mostly women, once possessed. They knew that each and every plant sat in its own environment. They recognised the form of the plant, its leaf colour and flower. Also, its herbal and food value. This is a human skill we possessed when we were much closer to nature. Having lost that skill, no amount of gaudy supermarket flowers will revive it.
Every flower has an evolution of millions of years, far longer than we humans have existed. Its relationship with other flora, insects and the wider ecology has taken millennia to evolve. It is complex, almost beyond our comprehension. Yet, it is being altered over just decades, often at a marketer’s whim for its commercial potential. This attack has even extended into dying the petals.
So, my relationship with flowers has had to evolve over my lifetime. As an aged gardener, I will continue to buy seasonal daffodils from Cornwall. I will be content to grow my own flowers in the garden and seek them out in the countryside.
Article by Ken West
Stonehenge Pensioner
