Lily of the valley

#wellness #garden #gardencenter #producer #nurseries #vegetal #plant #greenpretending #lilyofthevalley

Lily of the valley is a bit like the garden of happiness. The pleasure of enjoying its green space goes through small attentions, such as a bouquet of flowers offered on Valentine’s Day or a sprig of lily of the valley for May 1st. The flower is a symbol.  “Here, everything is symbol”…

Well-being lily of the valley

Last week, a group of environmental activists uprooted a lily of the valley plantation and destroyed the irrigation pipes. The goal: to protest against sand farming and the use of land and water for a plant that cannot be eaten.

As a symbol, the militants, at the same time, threw buckwheat seeds on the ground to replace the flower with food. A symbolic gesture? Yes, only! Because buckwheat is an annual plant that is best planted a little earlier in the season. It is content with poor soil but it needs water. It’s bad luck since the irrigation pipes have disappeared. And for the harvest, it will have to be done by hand. Lily of the valley claws left in the ground will grow back and mechanical picking up is impossible since lily of the valley is toxic. It would have been preferable to keep the buckwheat seeds sold at 10 euros per kilo to sow them in a more favorable place. But hey, it was a symbol, so we’ll forget the technical aspect! On the activists’ site, it is also indicated that the action was aimed at a “big producer”. I don’t know him, nor his weight, nor the standard in force to determine who is fat or not?

In addition to lily of the valley, tests on salads that consume less water and pesticides have also been trampled. All this for more ecology 🤔!

From Green Washing to Green Pretending

In the 1980s, the term Green Washing was coined to point the finger at companies that hid their environmental inconsistencies behind clean, innocent talk.Like “I pollute the oceans but my foundation helps the seabed”. Or even, very fashionable today “I manufacture my products on the other side of the planet, but I plant trees to limit my carbon footprint”. Communicating greener to give ourselves a clean image is very trendy even if we know very well that we need a maximum of raw materials to grow in turnover and take precedence over our competitors. These practices are less and less used as the consumer has taken the measure and is aware of this technique. It becomes counter-productive for companies. Today, professionals must work towards greater attention and respect for the environment.Green Pretending is pretty much the same thing. It is to claim to be green and eco-friendly to the end of the fingernails by only taking the problem through the small end of the telescope. By pulling lily of the valley, are we going to save the planet? Surely, but it’s not won 😂

Plant well-being.

Uprooting lily of the valley because its production uses water and it is not an edible plant, and because this lily of the valley belongs to a “big horticulturist”. If the reasoning is that, the implication is explicit. All those who make money with ornamental plants are condemnable and their crops must be trampled on. Going to the end of the reasoning, we are bad boss, we are bad!20,000 employees in garden centres, 15,000 in production, 100,000 in landscaping… Not to mention the florists… These are basically the people targeted by the symbolism of uprooting lily of the valley.It’s stupid, our professions are nevertheless at the heart of the protection of the environment. All is not perfect, of course! But everyone contributes to improving water savings, researching drought-resistant plants or managing plastic and green waste while providing education to our customers.There is still more to do, surely, but knowingly uprooting a plant is not a very green attitude, symbolically at least…

Safe fight?

When you are an amateur gardener, a lover of plants and the garden, just for your well-being, these debates are incomprehensible. The average citizen needs ornamental plants for his balance and for his well-being. In a latest IFOP survey for UNEP, 56% take advantage of their garden to relax. With roses, flowers… !Many theories, truths and untruths clash around and about this action aimed once again… symbolic. Perhaps it would be more effective to go and oppose the loggers in the Amazon who destroy more than 10,000 square kilometers of forest per year? Another idea, go and uproot the palm trees that produce palm oil, there are 26 million hectares?Perhaps also an intervention in Spain to see if, in the 35,000 hectares of plastic greenhouses, there is still room to sow buckwheat?Perhaps it would have been interesting not to trample the salads to understand the result of this test?Saving the earth by uprooting lily of the valley is a concept. Next step, I suggest the stripping of tomato plants in urban areas to emphasize the lack of shade in cities! There are still great battles to be fought!

Roland Motte… Gardener!