BUY LOCAL & ORGANIC FLOWERS

Organic Flowers

80% of all cut flowers sold in the US are grown in South America and travel thousands of miles before you ever see them. As many as 97% of Valentine’s Day roses will be imported. US Customs requires imported flowers to be pest-free, in order to protect US agriculture from pests that local crops have not adapted to. To ensure they are not carrying unwelcome pests, most cut flowers arrive saturated with up to 50 times the pesticides and fungicides permitted on food crops. Often, these include chemicals that are banned in the US, but not regulated in flower-exporting countries.
That’s probably not what you want to send your Valentine! Fortunately, there’s a growing movement, echoing our demand for local and organic foods, to help us find and buy locally grown and sustainably produced flowers. It’s less developed than the food distribution systems, but we’ve found some reliable sources.
Local Harvest
Best known as a resource for finding local farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, and organic food related businesses, Local Harvest also offers a terrific directory of local and organic flower growers. The flowers grown by Local Harvest family farmers are fresher than imported flowers, healthier for the people who grow them and the people who receive them, and healthier for our environment.
Veriflora
Veriflora certifies that the flower growers, distributors and florists it approves offer “only the highest quality products, produced with rigorous environmental accountability, … addressing the health and well-being of workers, their families and communities.” The program is administered by a global third-party certifier of environmental, sustainability and agricultural product quality claims:
establishing significant greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency goals,
– See more at: http://www.greenerdailylife.com/blogs/valentine-flowers-organic/#sthash.vodwAPtu.dpuf