Amy Stewart is the award-winning author of six books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world. She is the cofounder of the popular blog Garden Rant and is a contributing editor at Fine Gardening magazine. She lives in Portland with her husband Scott Brown, a rare book dealer. When she isn't writing, she's making art, which you can see on Instagram, or teaching art and writing classes online.
"Stewart's journey takes us down many such paths, all connected by
her own curiosity and highly readable prose. The greatest value of
Flower Confidential, however, is that it was written at all."
--the Washington Post
Stewart, an avid gardener and winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society's Writer's Award for her book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, now tackles the global flower industry. Her investigations take her from an eccentric lily breeder to an Australian business with the alchemical mission of creating a blue rose. She visits a romantically anachronistic violet grower, the largest remaining California grower of cut flowers and a Dutch breeder employing high-tech methods to develop flowers in equatorial countries where wages are low. Stewart follows a rose from the remote Ecuadoran greenhouse where it's grown to the American retailer where it's finally sold, and visits a huge, stock -exchange-like Dutch flower auction. These present-day adventures are interspersed with fascinating histories of the various aspects of flower culture, propagation and commerce. Stewart's floral romanticism she admits early on that she's "always had a generalized, smutty sort of lust for flowers" survives the potentially disillusioning revelations of the flower biz, though her passion only falters a few times, as when she witnesses roses being dipped in fungicide in preparation for export. By the end, this book is as lush as the flowers it describes. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
"Stewart's journey takes us down many such paths, all connected by
her own curiosity and highly readable prose. The greatest value of
Flower Confidential, however, is that it was written at
all."
--the Washington Post
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
