Reading: New Farm-to-Vase Flowers

Some women mainline chocolate. Others binge on salt. Me? I’m a flower junkie: I grow them, harvest them, photograph them, and steal their seed pods (from public lands only, I promise!) I dry and shake the dead heads for their seeds which I save and replant the next year. The inexplicable beauty of flowers—the artistic color contrasts, intricate petal arrangements, clever seed dispersal techniques, rhythmic openings and closings during the day—reveals to me a sense of the divine.

While I envy my neighbors’ organized Martha-Stewart-type gardens, what I really love are fields of wildflowers that grow without human management. Those fields, for me, represent the spirited resistance to the over-organized, over-planned hyper-efficient lives we lead—in which we now have to make an appointment to just talk to someone on the phone!

So I was more than thrilled recently to be on the receiving end of a few flower dis-arrangements from companies that are trying to make online flowers less boring and predictable by using more interesting blooms, being less wasteful, more transparent, and more sustainable. Bouqs is a wonderful service that picks flowers from the base of volcanos all over the world and sends them directly to your door starting at $36; you can even sign your mom up for a monthly subscription. They cut out the middleman and make more efficient use of every stem picked and show you how it’s done with amazing videos. Farm Girl Flowers says they source their flowers “ethically and honestly” and “support farms who pay living wages, avoid harmful chemicals, and have medical benefits for their teams.” Their gorgeous burlap-wrapped bouquets start at $48.