Big news recently from the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society). The RHS are the charity behind some of the biggest events on the UK horticultural calendar, including the Chelsea Flower Show and The Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. From 2021 the use of floral form will be banned at all RHS shows.

They are also encouraging designers to use ‘alternative methods’ rather than floral foam in this year’s shows.

So what’s the big deal with floral foam? And why is it such good news that the RHS, a highly respected authority in the floristry world, is making a stand?

Floral foam is a huge environmental issue however, if you are not in the floral industry, you may never have heard of it. But you probably have seen it - it’s that green spongy stuff at the bottom of the vase holding a gravity-defying display of florals in the foyer of your favourite hotel, or the big green ball shape holding together the enormous hanging spherical floral design suspended over the dance floor at your wedding, or the little square at the bottom of your beautiful, expensive box of roses.

Invented in the 1950s, floral foam was hailed as a miracle product. Cheap, lightweight, able to hold more than 50 times its own weight in water, readily able to be cut down to fit into vases and vessels, as well as keeping florals exactly where you wanted them, floral foam’s usefulness was immediately embraced by the florist industry.

However, floral foam has come under increasing scrutiny in recent decades. Floral foam - technically phenol-formaldehyde foam - is made from known carcinogens. It’s a plastic and like all plastics, isn’t biodegradable. Nor is it recyclable. It also contains particularly harmful microplastics, a scary thought given that these and other harmful chemicals leach into the vase water from floral foam - vase water that is ultimately flushed down the drain by florists and consumers alike. Because floral foam cannot be composted, and because of the way in which floral foam is used - flowers and botanicals being embedded deeply into it - most displays that contain floral foam go straight to landfill. They is just too much work to sort the compostable flowers from the foam, so it doesn’t happen.

When floral foam is burned - as it might be if it is used as the base for a wreath on a coffin for example - it releases harmful chemical gasses. And when it is a dry block and cut down - as it would be by any floral designer cutting down a block for floral design - the dust itself is both highly toxic and carcinogenic. Warning labels on floral foam state that it is a skin and respiratory irritant. Nice. Many in the industry call it ‘green cancer block’.

Like plastic straws, single use plastic bags and plastic lined coffee cups, floral foam is a one-use waste product that goes straight to landfill.

Because of these concerns, many florists and floral designers are taking an important stand and refusing to work with floral foam. There is a strong anti-floral foam movement swelling - check out for example @nofloralfoam on Instagram. Later this year a fantastic book A Guide to Sustainable Floral Mechanics by Sarah  Diligent will be be released. The book was funded via Kickstarter - with over 50K pounds UK raised in a matter of weeks from people committed to supporting a floral foam free design manual. I can’t wait to receive my copy.

Interest in alternative floral design methods is at an all-time high. Floral foam-free designers look to past traditions for guidance, just as organic gardeners and the slow food movements have done. After all, flowers were around well before floral foam was invented. Before floral foam, floral design relied on clever solutions like vases filled with balls of chicken wire and floral frogs - groovy discs of metal spikes or glass domes with holes in them designed to sit in the bottom of a vase - both of which keep flowers ‘in place’. These approaches are all reusable and produce the same result as floral form - helping to magnificently display flowers - but without the 1000s of years off landfill waste, or toxic and carcinogenic components.

The Korean arm of luxury UK florist and floral design school McQueens recently erected a fantastic floral arch - half of the arch was designed and constructed using floral foam, and the other half using water filled glass jars with twigs and branches for support. Such a clever way to demonstrate that floral foam is almost always avoidable. See images below.

It feels very hopeful that big players like the RHS and McQueens are promoting to end the use of floral foam. I don’t ever use floral foam, and there are plenty of other terrific florists out there avoiding it too. Next time you want to buy flowers - especially if you are a bride looking to find a floral designer to work with you in planning your wedding - you might like to ask if they use floral foam, or whether they are able to undertake the work without using floral foam. That way, you can enjoy the beauty of flowers guilt-free. Which is kind of how it should be.