I love them ... I love them not ... I love them ...
Cut flowers, that is.
Back in 2019, I researched the topic for an article on toxins associated with the cut flower business, and suddenly all the beautiful bouquets outside the grocery store seemed tainted.
Fortunately, florists who pay attention to the source of their products and strive to reduce waste are increasing in number. One such business is The Wild Bunch Flowers and Foliage, makers of stunning "freestyle" bouquets. Explore this Vancouver-based florist's website, and you'll find plenty of evidence of their attention to ecological, as well as aesthetic, concerns. You'll also find quite a few writing glitches. Keeping with a floral theme, we might compare those glitches to wilted blooms in an otherwise fresh and lovely arrangement. Let's have a look at some examples:
One of the most common question we get asked is "how long will the flowers last", the answer is not that simple. Depending on variety and so many other factors, flowers (and foliage) can last anywhere from days to weeks to years.
Our number one flower care tip is to interact with your flowers. Arranging and re-arranging until the last flower is gone. Through this interactive experience and through photography, mindful flower care can prolong the life of a bouquet down to the last remaining ingredient.
The highlighted sections above all contain problems. I'll address a few here:
The comma splice in the first paragraph (i.e. the third highlighted passage) is arguably more serious/distracting than the one I wrote about in this post.
The second sentence of the second paragraph is an example of a related error: a fragment. Although fragments can be deliberately used for effect (I've done so above, in the second line of the post), I don't think this one contributes anything to the passage. Rather, it seems like an error.
The final sentence suffers from a bit of awkwardness. There's nothing wrong with the phrase "mindful flower care." However, the whole sentence implicitly says something like this: "Through this way of looking after your flowers and through photography, looking after your flowers can prolong the life of a bouquet ..." In other words, the sentence treats two things that are roughly the same (i.e. a way of looking after flowers) as different things, with one of them being achieved through the other.
Here's a possible revision:
One of the most common questions we get asked is, "How long will the flowers last?" The answer is not that simple. Depending on variety and so many other factors, flowers (and foliage) can last anywhere from days to weeks to years.
Our number-one flower care tip is to interact with your flowers, arranging and re-arranging until the last flower is gone. Through mindful, interactive flower care, as well as photography, you can prolong the life of a bouquet down to the last remaining ingredient.
This version doesn't make all the stylistic changes I would recommend, but it plucks out the most distracting problems and errors. With some more mindful sentence care (i.e. a professional line edit of thewildbunch.ca), The Wild Bunch's website could be as beautifully crafted as their flower arrangements!