Instead of hiring a florist for her October wedding, Emily Day decided to grow her own flowers in her front yard in Calgary, Canada — a creative challenge that turned into a lesson on the hidden climate costs of the global flower industry. She said her homegrown arrangements were just as beautiful as store-bought ones and cost a fraction of the price.
Day and her fiance built garden boxes out of wooden shipping containers in March and filled them with blooms like yarrow, feverfew, strawflowers and statice. They harvested and dried them in midsummer ahead of fall frosts.