apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I hate to pick nits, here, and this is probably more the magazine's styling than her personal choices for the interiors, but one REALLY REALLY not green thing I noticed was the 4 or 5 arrangements of exotic cut flowers. Which didn't look like anything I've seen from the farmer's market.

Cut flowers (not counting small local concerns) are farmed unsustainably, often in countries that have little or no labor regulation. They then must be flown into the US, and refrigerated to retain freshness. They're also FULL of pesticides.

And even if you can find a small local company that does "organic" hothouse flowers, they're going to be a hell of a lot less green than something that thrives in US climates.

The opoponax, I see blue hydrangea, fully extended yellow tulips, pale orange parrot tulips and, I think, pink roses. Perhaps it's a benefit of living in Seattle, but I can get all of these, (except maybe the roses) at any of the farmers' markets here.

I'm assuming that Northern California has the same relative climate as Seattle and can therefore has similar crops so I don't see anything particularly exotic about them. That said, I agree with you're post in principal.

Yeah, on the East Coast we never get tulips that were grown outside a greenhouse (or shipped from S. America), our Hydrangeas never look that perfect, and roses, maybe in season (but never that kind).

There are a few companies that do swank "organic" flowers, but they all seem to be greenhouse grown and shipped from across the country (at least). So other than maybe a lack of pesticides, they don't seem much "greener" than other flowers.

The real way to go green with flowers is to put lots of full plants in your home, and when you're going to do cut flowers, get something LOCAL. and by local I mean not only grown locally, but something that actually thrives in your climate and is in season. I'll pick a wildflowers from a farm upstate over "organic" tulips shipped from a California greenhouse, anyday. Even if that doesn't look quite as glam.

Though again, I realize that's probably the stylist, and not her actual decor.

This is the sort of thing we usually get in New York. Still lovely, just not as exotic as what's in the article.

As a former resident of Seattle and California, yes, we would have had all of those flowers available locally, but the tulips would have been available in the spring, the roses in early summer and the hydrangeas in late summer. I don't think they would have all been available at local markets at the same time..definitely not the parrot tulips and the hydrangeas.