Flora Culture

Following the success of her first book, Geall turns her focus to revealing how trends in floral artistry and flower arranging reflect our larger global relationship to plants. As ever more types of flowers reach new popularity for their extraordinary beauty and exotic allure, they can also reach ever-broader markets. Many flower lovers are keen to learn more about them: what arrangements can you make with them, where do they come from, what is their cultural significance, and more. These plants must often be sourced from distant parts of the globe and flown great distances at great cost, however, generating large carbon footprints and sparking ethical concerns about the treatment of workers involved in growing them, supply chains, and questions about how to balance our ever-growing obsession for these flowers with fair practices for obtaining them. Here the floral designer extraordinaire focuses on her own and others’ work across the globe, reflecting new trends in floral design and exploring historical precedents and influences. Inspirational, visually compelling imagery helps the author address the many issues resulting from the continued expansion of the world’s sources and growing zones for floral and botanical material. She aims to teach as well as delight in a seemingly simple yet profound A to Z format for wide-ranging entries on diverse topics including aesthetics, appropriation, colonialism, fair trade, floriculture, globalization, indigeneity, microplastics, seasonality, sustainability, and tokenism—to name only a few. By using the species featured as springboards for discussion, Geall gets the reader truly thinking about what a bouquet of exotic flowers represents while also encouraging us to admire them as decadent examples of beauty for beauty’s sake.