Here’s a very cliché question: do you believe in love at first right? It’s that feeling they say you get when your heart beats faster and all the air in the planet seems to suddenly decide to congregate in your head, making you feel weightless, at the first and unforgettable glimpse of her. Its like you want to throw everything away, without any logical explanation, just for a person whom you’ve never met before. You feel like swooning at the mere thought of him, but of course you won’t do that for fear of embarrassing yourself. All that, or you’re having one of those things our good doctors call a stroke. Continue Reading »

If you’ve always wondered where your store bought cut flowers came from, it’s highly likely that your florist had them flown all the way from The Netherlands.

In the town of Aalsmeer, not far from the bustling city of Amsterdam, is the Aalsmeer Flower Auction, the world’s largest flower auction.  Established in 1928, over 7 billion cut flowers (half of which are roses) and over 150 million plants are sold every year to buyers around the world.  Most of the flowers in the Aalsmeer auction house are grown by local producers, but some are imported from countries like Kenya, Zambia, and Israel. Continue Reading »

On their own, flowers are beautiful and colorful enough to pick up the mood in any room, but just think of how everything will look ten times more incredible if you arrange your flowers cleverly.  There are no hard and fast rules to flower arranging, but there are a couple of guidelines and measures you might want to consider if you want to create a striking flower arrangement worth airtime on a Martha Steward episode. Continue Reading »

While our options today are almost bottomless, we somehow manage to go back to flowers when we pick out the perfect gift. As a jeweler residing in the Philippines, I get requests every so often asking me to cast diamonds at the center of flower shaped earrings or make a gold bracelet look like a little lei. I honestly could not help but wonder why flowers work and has always been considered as perfect gifts. Is it their appearance? Could it be because of their aroma? Below are some of my guesses: Continue Reading »

The flower industry works like a simple value chain: growers grow flowers, suppliers obtain them, then the flowers are sold to retailers or wholesalers before consumers buy them in bunches or bouquets. It sounds really simple, except the people involved come from all over the world.  Most of the produce in the flower industry are grown in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, with Netherlands as the biggest trade center and Germany as the primary market for imports.  
Exported cut flowers from the Netherlands to Germany are the primary component of the international flower industry and as well as a significant part of the European trade, which by itself accounts for a big part of the world trade.  In the American continents, Colombia is the United States’ major supplier.  Japan gets its cut flower supply from a more diverse base, with New Zealand, Europe, The Philippines, and Taiwan being the most important ones. Continue Reading »

People in the Victorian era took the language of flowers very seriously.  Due to the repressive atmosphere of the times, flowers became the means by which women communicated with their suitors.  The distinct scent of a particular flower, or the grouping of flowers in a bouquet conveyed unique messages.

Often, these botanical gifts demonstrated feelings and emotions nobody dared say out loud in public.  Even the way flowers were given to someone had its own hidden message.  For instance, if a man handed a woman an upright bouquet of flowers, he had something happy and positive to tell her.  An upside-down bouquet, on the other hand, meant he was bringing her some dark news.  Handing a man a flower with the right hand indicates that she is agreeable to his proposal, while presenting the flower with the left hand often means that she is declining his offer. Continue Reading »