You may be buying your loved one a bouquet of roses for this Valentine’s Day to express your love, but thinking about where they came from may kill the romance.
If you are living in a western country your roses have most likely come from South America, Southern Africa or India. Flowers from these areas are most likely grown by poorly paid workers using poisonous pesticides, thus exposing them to immediate and long term health problems. Then there is the huge amount of pollution from planes used to export the flowers across the world.

Governments, especially those in Europe have been made aware of these problems. And in Germany, for instance, a fair trade policy has been put in place for all imported flowers. From reading around on the subject nothing appears to be happening in the USA or Australia.

Organic Roses don’t seem to be widely available, but have a search around on the Internet to see what you can find. One website I found for US readers is Organic Bouquet