4 Floral Stories

In the French Riviera lies a medieval town that's held one industry at its very heart for the last 300 years. This is Grasse. This is the world's capital of perfume. This is the city of scents. Some of the big names that come from here, like Chanel, Chanel No. 5, Dior, of course, and Louis Vuitton, it's something that's understood here. It's a community, it's a language, it's something that people share. On a normal day, the pickers pick it up. As soon as it's picked up, we take it to a warehouse, we put it in bags, and it goes to the industry. It's a satisfaction to produce something of the highest quality. The rose culture is what I do, and I'm going to continue for a few more years, because I'm 72 years old. My name is Frédéric Baddy. We're in a process of extraction of the rose itself. It's obvious that it's a scent that's rich, and the quality of the facets is extremely sought after. Once the three stages of washing have been done, there will be daily deliveries of roses, and we're going to accumulate in the evaporator until we get to the final stage, which will be the final concentration to obtain the concrete. It takes 600 kg to make 1 kg of extract. I'd say that a small gram of extract is around 40-50 euros. So, thanks to being in Paris, without this, Grasse wouldn't be Grasse. My name is Jessica Buchanan, and I am an independent perfumer. I came to Grasse for a perfumery school. So, what I do is, in a very simple context, mixing together raw materials for various different uses, whether it's a perfume that one would wear to, for example, a candle. I think to create a good perfume, I like to allow six months to a year. This is a very creative process. When I sit in front of the perfumer's organ and create, it's like sitting in front of a piano and composing music. Yeah, I think there's something in the air here. Covering a half acre with hanging flowers, the oldest known wisteria in Japan is the centerpiece of this brilliantly pastel-colored flower park. Located in Tochigi, Japan, just over an hour train ride from Tokyo, is Ashikaga Flower Park. The park spans 23 acres and is home to more than 350 wisterias and other flowers. The colors vary depending on the flowering season, from pinks and purples to yellows and whites. Some features of the park include the wisteria tunnel and floating gardens, but the pride and joy of Ashikaga Flower Park is the Great Miracle Wisteria. The 140-year-old sprawling tree is located in a place of pride, right in the center of the park. After nightfall, the site is lit up so these draping flowers can be seen at all hours. The vivid yellow wisteria begins blooming at the start of May and is the only one of its kind in Japan. The park is a year-round attraction with seasonal plants that creates an ever-changing sense of magnificence, as nature puts on a show. Everyone understands that flowers are a symbol of beauty, a symbol of beauty and a symbol of life. When I put my hand in it, I can make it even more vibrant. I can turn it into a symbol of life. My name is Makoto Azuma. I'm an artist who uses flowers. I've been doing this for 20 years now. I used to be in a rock band, but I couldn't make a living just from music. So I found a part-time job and was hired by a florist. That's how I became a florist. This project is about flying flowers into space. We're going to fly flowers into a place where flowers don't exist. We started with the idea of flying flowers into outer space, and now we're trying to make it a reality. We're going to continue this project in many other places. Tomorrow, we're going to buy flowers at a flower market downtown LA. We're going to buy about 1,000 to 1,500 flowers. Right now, we're mainly looking at flowers, but we're going to talk to the flowers and decide which ones we're going to use. We're going to head to Love Rock Desert. We're going to fly flowers up to 30,000 meters in the air. We want to fly flowers a little higher than 30,000 meters. We're going to fly flowers up to 30,000 meters in the air, so we're going to make balloons that actually lift the flowers. The next step is to record the process. We're going to record the process, and then we're going to add the technical parts. At the end, I'm going to combine the flowers that I bought at a flower market in LA and make a work of flowers. Then we're going to launch it. The flowers are really delicate, so I don't know if they'll go into space and bloom beautifully. It's a very experimental work, so I don't know until I actually do it and check the work. Watch for me, I might wave or something. Let me know if you're not getting jibbed yet. Go, go, go, go! Every year, about 8 million tons of waste flowers are dumped into the Indian rivers. All the pesticides and insecticides that were used to grow these flowers mixes with the river water, making it highly toxic. We decided to do something about it. Indians depend on the river water for drinking water, for our agriculture, and for our basic needs. In Hinduism, we Hindus go to temples and offer flowers to our gods. Once these flowers have been offered to our gods, they become sacred. They cannot be dumped in the dustbin. So according to religious customs, they are dumped into the river Ganges. Once these flowers have been dumped in the river, it creates havoc in the fragile ecosystem of the water body. We had decided that we want to solve the flower problem, but we didn't have a solution. So we started going to temples begging for the waste flowers. But turned out no one would trust us. Boys coming and asking you for waste, you're not sure what they'll do with it. So slowly and slowly, we started with around 12 kilos of waste flowers and in a month, we started collecting 80 kilograms of waste flowers. Today, our trucks go to the temple directly, collect these waste flowers in bins and bring them to our facility. We have a capacity of about 8.7 tons of waste flowers per day. These flowers are treated to remove all the pesticides and insecticides and convert them into products. We make charcoal-free incense sticks, bathing bars, and now we are launching a biodegradable alternative styrofoam made from these waste flowers. River Ganges is the holiest river in the world. It says a dip in the River Ganges can remove all your sins. When I see River Ganges in the state that it is in, I feel sad. And I feel that the status quo needs to be changed.