Meeting:

January 14, 2010

Guest Presenter:

Amy Stewart

Program:

Flower Confidential

As an estimated 40 billion dollar industry, flowers are big business; and what you don’t know about flowers may surprise you. Author Amy Stewart presented a behind-the-scenes tour of the flower trade – from the hybridizers who create new varieties in the laboratory, to the growers who produce millions of flowers in factory-like settings, to the Dutch auctioneers who set the bar and the price, and ultimately to the neighborhood florists orchestrating the mind-boggling demands of Valentine’s and Mother’s Day.

Amy explored the relevance of flowers in our lives and in our history and in the process, she revealed all that has been gained and lost by tinkering with nature.

Amy Stewart is the winner of the 2005 California Horticultural Society Writer’s Award and the recipient of a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. She is the author of Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, and most recently Wicked Plants.

Amy’s book Flower Confidential was available to purchase at our meeting (see below).

Amy lives in northern California, where she writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and Organic Gardening. For events and more information about Amy, visit amystewart.com.

Flower Confidential:

Amy Stewart’s book, Flower Confidential, was available at our January meeting (as well as anywhere great books are sold). More details and excerpts are available on Amy’s website.