- Anna Beall
- Nov 21, 2025
- 3 min read
And Why Choosing Real Flowers Still Matters
It’s common to hear people describe wedding flowers as wasteful.
They’re here for a day. They fade. They don’t last forever. Compared to something tangible like furniture or clothing, flowers can feel indulgent or unnecessary.
But that idea comes from a misunderstanding of what flowers actually are and how natural systems work.
FLOWERS ARE NOT DISPOSABLE OBJECTS
Flowers are agricultural crops.
They are grown in soil, harvested at a precise moment, and designed to live briefly as cut stems. Their lifespan isn’t a failure. It’s the point.
Calling flowers waste because they eventually fade is like calling food waste because it gets eaten.
Their value isn’t in permanence.
It’s in participation.
WHY POLLINATORS MATTER (AND WHY FLOWERS ARE PART OF THAT)
Most of the food we eat exists because of pollinators.
Bees and other pollinators are responsible for fertilizing the plants that grow fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Without them, crops fail. Food systems collapse.
Pollinators don’t survive on food crops alone.
They need a continuous, diverse food source from early spring through fall. That’s where flower crops matter.
Cut flower farms grow a wide range of blooming plants that flower over long windows. These blooms provide nectar and pollen when food crops aren’t flowering, creating the bridge pollinators need to survive the entire season.
They feed the insects that make our food possible.
That relationship doesn’t end because a portion of the crop is cut for an event.
CUTTING IS PART OF THE SYSTEM CUTTING IS PART OF THE SYSTEM
Many flowers grown for weddings are cut-and-come-again varieties.
They are meant to be harvested repeatedly. Cutting a stem signals the plant to send up new growth. More stems. More blooms. Longer flowering windows.
In this kind of system, cutting is not destruction.
It’s how abundance is created.
Flowers are grown to be cut so they can give mor
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE WEDDING
This is where the idea of waste usually falls apart.
When we’re done with wedding flowers, they don’t go to a landfill.
They go back to the soil.
Stems, foliage, and spent blooms are composted. That plant material breaks down and becomes food for microorganisms. Those microorganisms feed the soil. The soil feeds the next generation of plants.
If farms didn’t have plant material returning to the soil, soil health would collapse. Compost isn’t a byproduct. It’s the engine.
Nothing is thrown away.
It simply changes form.
WHY “FAKE” ISN’T THE BETTER OPTION
Artificial flowers are often presented as a less wasteful alternative.
But most fake flowers are made from plastic, petroleum-based fabrics, or chemically processed wood. They require significant energy to produce, are shipped long distances, and rarely get reused enough times to offset their impact.
They don’t feed pollinators.
They don’t return to the soil.
They don’t support farms or ecosystems.
They just sit.
REAL FLOWERS BELONG TO A CYCLE
Real flowers grown locally and handled thoughtfully are part of a living system.
They feed pollinators.
They improve soil.
They are composted and returned to the earth.
They make room for more growth.
That’s not waste.
That’s a closed loop.
A DIFFERENT WAY TO LOOK AT I
Instead of asking whether flowers last forever, it’s worth asking a different question.
Do they contribute to something larger than the day itself?
When flowers are grown, cut, used, and returned to the soil within a regenerative system, the answer is yes.
Your wedding flowers don’t need to live forever to matter.
They only need to belong.
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