Of late, my greatest pleasure has been Laurie Colwin. The Manhattanite author, who died in her late forties in 1992, wrote a series of entertainingly wry novels about contemporary domestic and society life in New York. The page I most recently folded the corner of (all my favourite books resemble origami) can be found in Happy All the Time (1978), about the pursuit and illusion of marital bliss. It features a scene in which Vincent, a haphazard, freckled chap, goes shopping for flowers before visiting his new girlfriend’s apartment for the first time. He asks the florist, “a stooped old Greek”, for “something that looks like the things they hang on prize-winning horses”.
“Death, birth, or you got a girl?” replies the florist.
A businesslike exchange unfolds; the florist asks if the couple has had a fight.
“Flowers help sometimes,” said the florist. “And sometimes they don’t.”
Many might have forgotten that Valentine’s Day is upon us, but the florists won’t have. February kicks off a frenzied period for those in the floricultural industry, with brief respite until Mother’s Day (30 March), before wedding season unfolds. For those who work with sustainably and locally grown flowers, it’s even more of a challenge: few plants are in bloom in mid-February, what with it being late winter, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a red rose in any English bed.
Of course, the supermarkets and garage forecourts would suggest otherwise. A dozen roses in every shade from Barbara Cartland pink to scarlet can be hastily picked up, along with the sprayed-on pesticides, fungicides and fertilisers that enable the perfection of these three-month-old, glasshouse-raised flowers. Pesticide residue on imported roses wildly outnumber that on food imports; many used are banned in the UK and Europe because of the threat they pose to human health. The people (mostly women) who work in the greenhouses bear the brunt from exposure to such chemicals. Studies have shown those living and working in areas of flower production have suffered poorer neurobehavioural development, reproductive disorders and congenital malformations. Pesticides also contaminate the local soil, water systems and air, not to mention other insects and animals in the area.
And this is all before the flowers even get on the plane. A dozen Kenyan roses have a carbon footprint of around 75kg, the same as producing 35 steaks.
Such facts would, admittedly, have taken the edge off Colwin’s florist scene (the recipient of the bouquet was baffled by it – “That’s an awful lot of flowers,” Misty said. “Now what am I supposed to do with them?”), but in the far less entertaining reality of life in 2025, we have options.
The fancy Italian supermarket Natoora has been pushing the Radicchio, Not Roses campaign again, heavily suggesting that the amorously motivated offer a bouquet of pink-hued bitter leaves to their amores, or failing that seasonal flowers – “camellia, cyclamen, winter cherry blossom”. The campaign started in 2022, but similar sentiments have been abounding in recent years. (Forced) rhubarb not roses, for instance, which is in season now. Personally, I’d take a dozen blood oranges over a bunch of roses any day; they’ve felt particularly elusive this year, and the colour is undoubtedly more satisfying.
Those dismissing Valentine’s Day as a modern consumerist creation would be wrong: people have been celebrating their lovers in mid-February since medieval times. The Victorians, obviously, were hugely into flowers and the hidden meanings they contained. But among the most interesting historical references is by Chaucer, when he claimed in the “Parlement of Foules” that even the birds chose mates on 14 February – then considered the first day of spring. What a superior gift, a whole new season. It’s enough to make me want to forage a bouquet – among it, hellebores, sweet-smelling daphne and witch hazel, and perhaps a few early daffs.
[See also: Bridget Jones after Mr Darcy]
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This article appears in the 12 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Reformation