Can Instagram Save the Flower Industry?

In a field of tulips, a group of three young women stop and ask me to take their photograph. They're wearing matching white dresses, and they have thick, drawn-on eyebrows, which may have been described in the late months of 2014 as being "on fleek." Around us, families wander in and out of the furrowed land between plantings, stopping to pick long-stemmed tulips and place them in their baskets. We're at Wicked Tulips Flower Farm, but this is no ordinary farm visit. I had to buy a ticket to get in. People seem more interested in taking pictures of the crop than they are in buying them. And that's fine by Wicked Tulips, which doesn't primarily sell flowers, even though they have some 600,000 of them growing on five acres. They're selling an experience—an Instagram-ready location, fresher than the Museum of Ice Cream, greener than the Color Factory. It's a place to see and mostly be seen, and it's perfectly calibrated to capture the millennial imagination.

It's the kind of engagement the floral industry is banking on for its survival. They want Americans of a certain age to start treating flowers like the Europeans do: as a year-round luxury, the backdrop of our lives, as essential as a good bottle of wine at dinner or slice of cake on your birthday. The floral industrial complex, which includes multinational commercial growers, large-scale importers, and retail purveyors down to neighborhood florists and bodegas, is currently seeking ways to reach younger generations. They're worried that people like me, a 31-year-old member of the much-maligned superbrood that came of age around the turn of the 21st century—now the largest potential customer pool in American history—aren't buying enough flowers. They're anxious that their industry, which is a relatively new one in the grand scheme of things, is in danger because of it. And so they're trying to convince us to buy flowers, not only because flowers are nice and make us happy, but because they provide texture and experience and other buzz-marketing things.

Flowers can also help you "build your own personal narrative," according to Brigid Stevens, who holds the title VP of brand at millennial-focused online flower retailer The Bouqs, which has an Instagram following in the hundreds of thousands. "Our customers, millennials and beyond, are gift-givers. They're homemakers, decorators and lifestyle enthusiasts," she says. "What's so appealing about this industry is that it's tactile. It's about creating and making something. That's how we position our brand."

As one of those millennials and, I suppose, a possible lifestyle enthusiast, I should be in their target market. But I have to admit: I haven't been buying flowers lately. Not since I began reporting this story and saw first-hand how flowers make their way into our country, then sit in cardboard boxes in massive refrigerated warehouses while shivering workers in Carhartt overalls check each upright set of stems. And how those tightly closed roses, waxy tulips and spikey chrysanthemums can be rendered scentless and soulless by the long, cold journey from field to vase, the product of a massive global juggernaut.

But I like flowers. I like them a lot. They make me happy. They make you happy, too, even if you may not realize it. A Rutgers University study found that when participants were presented with a gift other than flowers, they smiled and were happy. Sometimes they would smile a "Duchenne smile," or a true smile that involves the mouth, cheeks and eyes. But sometimes they would fake it, offering up a half-smile, a false affirmation. When the same participants were presented with flowers, 100 percent of them offered a Duchenne smile. "In an emotions lab, you never get a 100 percent response unless you're dropping a snake on people," said the researcher. "I was shocked."

These days, flowers are available at every Walgreens, CVS, Whole Foods and Costco. They're everywhere, and they're not particularly expensive—you can get a bouquet for less than $10. So why aren't more of us buying them?

Millennials have not yet been accused of "killing" the floral industry, but there is fear among cut flower buyers and sellers that a dystopian future with fewer bouquets (and too many succulents) could be on the horizon. U.S. employment in the floral sector dropped by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2014, according to data compiled by the University of Florida, and the job outlook for floral designers over the next few years is bleak. In 2015, the not-for-profit Produce Marketing Association published a report identifying millennial disinterest as a key factor affecting the cut flower business. Millennials, according to the PMA, are less likely than baby boomers to appreciate flowers as gifts, less likely to know where to buy flowers, and less likely to purchase bouquets. They are, however, more likely to enjoy single flowers than their older counterparts and more likely to purchase flowers to impress guests. But price is cited as a barrier for many millennial customers, and as the PMA notes, because "floral expenditures on cut flowers are highly correlated with disposable income … in the U.S., growth in expenditure on horticulture products has come to a standstill."

In 2016, the American Floral Endowment issued a 72-page action plan titled "Marketing Tactics to Increase Millennial Floral Purchases," offering suggestions to help florists attract younger customers, including things like running quirky advertisements on social media and offering free gifts with purchases. The AFE argues for an increased focus on the benefits of flowers, and also recommends taking advantage of "trendy cultural trends," like food and personal health, on social media platforms. The goal is to get young people to stop thinking of flowers as an extravagance and start considering them a part of an everyday Gwyneth-style pampering regimen.

Flowers could dovetail nicely with the still-blossoming Goop-erific wellness industry, if they can just figure out how to tap into that market. For the past five years, succulents and houseplants (particularly the house-tour ubiquitous fiddle leaf fig and the always creeping, never flowering pothos) have reigned supreme in this arena, but they're pretty sure cut flowers could edge their way in, if the right influencers got on board.

According to the AFE, though millennials clearly want to share their peonie selfies with the world, they also happen to be "the least knowledgeable about making flower arrangements and the symbolic meanings of flowers." Apparently, we don't know how to trim rose stems or arrange chrysanthemums in a vase, and we were never taught the Victorian language of flowers, in which each blossom is assigned its own highly specific meaning (hydrangeas for heartlessness, snowdrops for hope, poppies for sleepiness and insincerity). While most floral companies are content to let this complicated code die, Teleflora, one of the largest and oldest flower delivery services in America, recently launched a blog that offers short articles on the meanings of various blooms, including information on "birth month" flowers, as well as some pop psychology on the significance of color. Orange roses signal passion. White roses mean "we're young and in love."

In a hotel conference room in Miami, a wall of red roses has begun to sweat. The roses have been tightly packed into a standing frame, and from a distance, the hundreds of crimson blooms appear to blur together, taking on the texture of velvet. Up close, you can see how the heat is beginning to affect them, breaking down the structure of the petals and turning the edges brown. A sweet fragrance wafts from the wall, but only if you get very close.

All around are similar walls, some made of white chrysanthemums, others decorated with blowsy baby pink peonies and powder blue hydrangeas, but roses (red roses, so-called "Freedom roses," as they were branded in the post-9/11 years) are the defining feature of the room. And that makes sense, because despite bridal trends and wildflower hype, rose varietals are the most important genus in the global floral importing business. They're the MVP of the flower world, the traditional Valentine's Day gift, and the standard unit of desire on The Bachelor. Roses fuel the flower trade, and the bulk of the roses sold in the US enter the country just a few miles away at the Miami International Airport.