When I was invited to write an article on my experience with bumble bees, this title came to mind. I like to think it’s part of Christopher Bollas’s ‘unthought known’ territory – something you’ve carried around in your mind without ever really realising it. And as it turns out, the phrase is rather apt: Darwin referred to them as the ‘hum bee’ – because they ‘hummed’.
Flowers are a precious part of our life-events, but are we aware of the significant environmental and human costs of the demand for cheap flowers at all times of the year?
Until the 1970s, bought flowers came from British farms, while today, most are grown commercially in Holland, Columbia, Ecuador and Kenya, routed through Dutch auctions. The flower industry has a massive carbon footprint, from heating greenhouses to refrigerated transport, a vast chemical footprint from pesticides, herbicides and preservatives, some banned in the UK, polluting soil and water, poisoning pollinators, impacting flower workers and their communities, many producers are not Fairtrade.