Rebels with a Vase
Sustainable floristry, plus banned words, poetry and porpoises, life-sized cardboard puppets, and other wonderment .
I’m a slow writer, partly because I love research and end up being sucked into interesting, but often tangential, holes. I also do a lot of interviews. That means I end up having to wade through reams of information to chip out the story. It can be frustrating and draining, but, when the story comes out, all is forgotten. To wit, this story I wrote on sustainable floristry, which was published yesterday in The Walrus: “Rebels with a Vase: Meet the Florists Taking on Big Flower.”1 I started working on it over a year ago, did several reporting trips, and conducted over a dozen interviews, but, today, the months of work and weeks of writing agony are forgotten, and I’m delighted to see this out in the world. (Online now and in print in the June issue.)
“We think of flowers as special—as a way to express our love, our congratulations, our sorrow—but are we really treating them as such?”
Sustainable floristry is one of my beats. It got its start in 2023 when I wrote about the problems with floral foam, a ubiquitous mechanic in the industry. (And the book Cut Flower Garden, which was a gift from a friend, made me start to think more about the source of flowers.) Since then, I’ve been closely following small flower farms (such as these ones)—which provide seasonal and local blooms and provide an alternative to imports which can come with all sorts of environmental and social baggage—and florists who are opting to chart a new path in the industry, which seems a bit stuck by its reliance on foam, imported flowers, and floral delivery networks. (To be fair, these florists are also being squeezed by grocery stores and less-than-scrupulous online floral delivery services and our desire to have access to everything all the time and at the lowest cost possible, all of which is addressed in the article.)
I hope you’ll take a moment to read, and perhaps share, the story.
(On another writing note, a story I wrote last year just grabbed a nomination for a National Magazine Award in the long-form feature category, which is pretty exciting for me. I’ve edited stories that have made shortlists, and even won awards, but this is the first time I’ve been nominated for a feature as a writer. It’s totally unrelated to flowers and gardening, but I think you’ll enjoy it: “The First First Responders: when disaster strikes along British Columbia’s coast, Indigenous rescuers are often the first on the scene.”
I was going to do a book review this week, but I’ll save that for another day. For now, here are a few things that caught my eye.
Life-size cardboard puppet animals travelling 20,000 km from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle? The Herds is mesmerizing. (Short version on Instagram.)
What ancient poetry can tell us about modern porpoises.
Grab a cup of whatever you’re in the mood for because if you like plants, particularly trees, I think you’ll be spending some time here on the World Wide Wood an on-line botanic atlas, explained here.
I can’t believe I’m writing this in North America in 2025, but here is a list of words, that, according to PEN America, are being scrubbed from government websites and communications. Writer Janisse Wray has made a zine of the words over at Rhizophere.
Finally, in Orion, Eula Bliss muses on forcing in the garden, and writes beautifully about rhubarb, one of my favourites from the spring garden.
“Rhubarb commands the first planting. Press a seed into the soil, and you light a fuse that will uncoil underground. At first there is only a slight swelling, almost imaginary, a fragment of dirt displaced. Then the seed casing splits and the chardlings unfold their long leaves and stand up on their slender pink stems like a flock of flamingos.”
A note on the title. Typically, writers don’t get to keep their working titles—editors have their own idea of what’s going to grab readers—so I was chuffed that The Walrus team kept my play on words, Rebels with a Vase, which only works, of course, if you say vase like a Brit or Canadian [vahz].
What a perfect topic for you, Adrienne, sustainable floristry! This is something to look forward to in our next Walrus and I hope your lovely photographs are included with your article too.