Rip currents are found along most coastlines, and where they form near popular beaches they can be deadly.

The journalist Decca Aitkenhead has written movingly about how quickly life can change after her husband was swept out to sea by a rip current while rescuing their son.

A rip current (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a rip tide) is a strong, narrow, fast-flowing current directed toward the sea that travels up to one to two metres per second. Rip currents usually develop close to the shoreline in very shallow water around a metre deep – just where beach bathers are usually found.

For rip currents to form, there must be areas close to the beach where some waves break and other areas where they do not. Usually this is caused by sandbars on the seabed that form from the sediment deposited by waves and tides. Waves are encouraged to break when travelling through the shallower water over the sandbars, but they don’t break when travelling through the regions of deeper water between them.

As waves enter the shallow water they ‘shoal’ – increase in height – and through their momentum they begin to force water towards the shoreline. Once the waves begin to break – so decrease in height – this momentum is reduced, opposed by another force known as a pressure gradient. This opposing pressure gradient causes the sea surface level to rise up by a few centimetres where the waves are breaking.

As the surface level of the sea where the waves are breaking over the sandbars is slightly higher than where the waves are not breaking, a current forms from water that is essentially flowing downhill from where it is higher to where it is lower. These are called feeder currents, and where they meet between sandbars their flow turns away from the shore and becomes the strong rip current that travels through the deeper water.

Why are they dangerous?

Rip currents are dangerous because they carry anything in the water seawards to deeper waters, and are not easy for swimmers to detect. In fact most bathers are not aware of the hazard they represent.

A bather in shallow water is likely to drift with the feeder currents along the shore without noticing, at which point they may be carried into the main rip current. Very quickly, they are carried out to sea and out to depths where waves may break over their heads. At this point bathers frequently panic, often with tragic results. Those attempting to swim back towards the shore against the rip current will quickly tire as the rip will generally be too strong even for the most competent swimmer.

While rip currents are caused by the action of waves they are also affected by the tides. Whether the tide is in or out will vary the depth of water over sandbars, effectively becoming a switch that turns wave breaking on and off as water depth rises and falls.

In Britain’s south-west, for example, sandbars are frequently found around the shoreline at low tide. For several hours low water waves break over these bars and cause rip currents, but as the tide rises the water depth over the bars increases, the wave breaking stops, and the rips become inactive. This repeats over the twice-daily tidal cycle, and is also regulated by the fortnightly cycle of spring tides and neap tides, which gives rip currents a semi-regular pattern.

Knowing this can keep you safe

Rip currents can be identified using complicated instrumentation, GPS-equipped drifter floats, or even by releasing coloured dye into the waters around the surf zone. But a simple trick to spot rip currents is to watch for the patterns of wave breaking visible from the shore.

Seen from a high vantage point such as a cliff above a beach, the contrast of intense white foam where waves are breaking versus the flat, dark waters of the rip current creates a characteristic pattern. In fact the same concept is used to identify rip currents using automated camera systems.

It’s worth remembering though that, somewhat counter-intuitively, bathers should head towards the surf, and stay clear of the dark, flat water under which the fast currents lurk – even though it looks more inviting.

And the safest beaches for bathers are those with a lifeguard, who are trained to recognise safe regions – their flagged areas and advice should always be followed.

Editor’s note: If you get caught up in a rip current, do not try to swim against it. Instead, swim parallel to the beach to reach an opposing current that will carry you back in again.

Martin Austin is Lecturer in Coastal Sediment Dynamics, Bangor University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The first time I met with ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo was in central Mexico. We sat at her office, located in the deep mountains of the Sierra Gorda region and I must admit I arrived knowing very little about her, but driven by curiosity. I knew enough to know I would be meeting a highly respected woman and had a hunch that one way or another, she would become a true influence for the rest of my life. A woman of deep spirituality and clear determination with an incomparable passion and dedicated to the defence of what she considers to be her one and only treasure in life. A story anyone can learn from.

In 1986, ‘Pati’ Ruiz founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda), an organisation that today represents a unique model of community ‘conservation economy’. Her goal was to create a sustainable way of living for the more than 120,000 people living inside the Sierra Gorda Reserve, the most densely populated reserve in the entire country; a non-exclusive conservation programme. And so, she did – and still does this – by empowering the historically-marginated female population of the region.

These women have lived always having to keep quiet – oppressed and humiliated by a traditionally ‘macho’ society.  But today, as Pati explains, things have moved on:  “When you hear their motivation as they talk, and how happy they are to be receiving their own extra ‘cents’ per month and when you see that for the first time, some of the fathers have to stay home and take care of their kids because the women have to go work… well, that’s truly my ‘cherry on top of the cake.” Her ultimate goal is to see these women become the voice of conservation in the Sierra Gorda.

Pati Ruiz Corzo spent the first part of her life as a music teacher. In Queretaro, located two hours north of Mexico City, she had spent her time among the upper echelons of Mexican society. She married, had two kids, Beto and Mario, and lived a typically normal life, until one day, she and her husband, decided to leave the city, tired of what she calls ‘the extremes of modern society’.

 “For a long time, I’d put up with the dictates of being ‘modern’; searching for material success, social recognition, being a perfect housewife. There were times when these suffocating dogmas felt a heavy burden.” Pati was certain that she didn’t want her children growing up within a system she didn’t agree with.

”I rebelled against seeing my kids in competition for a ‘camouflaged’ knowledge and not a digested one. In school, their natural talents were being taken away in order to programme them for a stereotype, which I myself was opposed to. I was a teacher for too many years to not be able to see and understand how the gifts of the spirit and the character were being sterilised. Someone’s nature should be respected and should never be expected to accomplish a task imposed by others.”

Such decision was not easy. “I was afraid to leave the only lifestyle I knew, but I wanted to discover other values. I wanted to develop an intimate connection with nature – one that we had clearly lost. I heard shocking examples of kids saying that tomatoes were grown in the back of supermarket stores…my God, they don’t even know were milk comes from, but we can’t blame them for that.”

The Sierra Gorda Reserve has the highest levels of biodiversity in Mexico (the 5^th most biodiverse country in the world) with regions of semi desert, low jungle and a conifer forest that could easily pass for any Canadian landscape. In Pati’s words: ”This is were I found what’s truly real and valuable for me. Pure beauty… I found a treasure. Living surrounded by nature is a pleasure. It’s vibrant and alive. Here, there is no place for lies. We all live without labels”.

This is a woman who has the ability to inspire pretty much everyone that crosses her path. With an imposing charisma, Pati Ruiz manages to speak to large audiences without fear and she almost always ends a speech by singing – reminding us how she has kept alive what she valued the most of her past musical life. An emotional touch that brings pretty much everyone to tears.

She says she was welcomed from the start by the people of the Sierra Gorda. “I was well received from day one. I learned how to talk to them in a way which meant they wouldn’t feel a distance between us and I also brought my accordion with me ande I sang to them. That helped me build real solid bridges with the people of the Sierra Gorda.”

Today Pati Ruiz Corzo shares her passion for conservation and empowerment by holding workshops that attract people from all over the world. She focuses on sharing her message with those who initially were not interested by what she had to say.

When she started out she admits it took time to convince some people to share that journey with her. ”It took some time for some of them to believe me. It wasn’t easy but I felt that the local people just wanted someone to show how we could all move together. Now there’s a huge amount of will from the whole community to overcome all kinds of challenges we face.”

Pati fought not only to convince the local Sierra Gorda community that there was an urgent need to protect their natural heritage, but she has also had to stop many large outside interests and corporations from meddling into the affairs of this 300,000 hectare UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A geographical isolated region, ideal for hidden and illegal activities to occur, such as mining and logging, underpinned by a country swamped by numerous corruption cases which has brought her into contact and conflict with just as many unsavoury individuals.

”I’ve fought all kinds of interests and individuals, some of them truly horrible. I’ve taken on Governors, the Ministry of Transport and the National Electricity Company. They’ve tried to build dams and highways and install high voltage cables. They’ve tried to take natural resources away from the local community, but as I tell them when I send them away; the only interest and objective of this territory is its total and genuine conservation! No one touches it!”

Clearly a position that has earned her more than a few enemies, especially in the Mexican government. “What they sign up for with international treaties should actually be carried out and not just written. They need to re-orientate public policies. There is a slow response from the Government; the politicians are not being efficient and even less farsighted. But I must say that we also lack a civil society capable of playing the role of a real auditor”.

Pati and her supporters are making headway. In the last five years, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda has garnered numerous conservation awards including been awarded with the United Nations Champions of the Earth and the National Geographic World Legacy Award (2012, 2016).

“We adopt and adapt. We’ve try to work inter-institutionally with the local and federal governments, as well as other international organisations, even if it means that sometimes I’m forced to put on the pressure and convince them of many things they wouldn’t had done without our campaigning. You’ve no idea – it’s been like organising an anthill!

“We’ve also tried to create an active public spirit. Mexico is a ‘thirsty’ country with galloping desertification levels and we are a small but significant rescue team”. And her work is not only environmental and economic, but cultural too.

“We organise festivals part of one big cultural party made to recover our identity – to remember that we are not ‘Gringos‘ (North-Americans) but ‘Huastecos‘ (Huastec indigenous people). With so many people migrating north, there’s a strong transculturation phenomena. It’s important to feel you belong to a place.”

I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sierra Gorda and saw the proof of the outcomes Pati talked about. More than a conservationist, she’s an activist in a country that lacks the courage to value such citizens and she’s an example in Mexico and abroad, to anyone who lacks the motivation to speak out and act on their own social conscience.

“Only civil society can change this situation,” she says. “Local answers are the only solution. We have to put our hearts and our dedication into the work and put pressure on local authorities to do the right thing. We have to innovate, do things with love and for the wellbeing of all. 

“I want a total revolution! A change of values where we seek full abundance for everyone, where we recognise nature as a vital part of our lives and where we learn to treat nature with respect and care. I don’t believe in accumulating more and more. What accumulates stagnates and what stagnates rots. I believe in the simplicity of life. Once you know the true value of what is sacred you’ll have the energy to keep going to make those changes.”

This Author:

Tadzio Mac Gregor was born in Mexico City to a French mother and a Mexican father. He has been involved with several social and environmental projects in Mexico, Asia and the Middle East. Having started working recently as a freelance journalist specializing in foreign affairs, environmental conservation and human development he now contributes to several newspapers in Mexico, France, Brazil and the United States

Globally the cut flower business is worth $100 billion a year, and according to fairtrade.org the main producers are the Netherlands, accounting for 55%, Columbia 18%, Ecuador 9% and Kenya 6%. The UK is the third largest consumer for cut blooms, pipped only by the USA and Germany.

Largely grown in glasshouses, 70% of the world’s flowers arrive via the Netherlands in one of three enormous flower “markets” – take for example the one million metre-squared Aalsmeer flower auction – which has the largest footprint of a building in the world, equating to 128 acres.

But travelling takes its toll on flowers. Not only do they require an enormous amount of energy to be cooled to 2 degrees, and put in a sleep-like trance, they are then sprayed with fungicide, x-rayed, put on a plane, and dipped in silver nitrate where they are mummified and lose all their scent, requiring the consumer to add a sachet of “life-giving” sugar solution to already four-day-old blooms.

Buying locally means that you are ensured a longer shelf life from your flowers, and your bouquet will remain smelling fragrant. It also means you get more choice as many delicate flowers such as sweet peas can’t cope with this process.

Claire Brown, owner of Surry flower farm Plant Passion, and volunteer at Gill Hodgson’s initiative Flowers From the Farm, grows more than 250 varieties for three main markets; local customers, florists and “DIY brides”, who buy the flowers and then create their own bouquets and displays.

With a background in horticulture, Claire seized an opportunity when she saw a gap in the market four years ago: “There has been huge growth in the industry. Before local growers started up there just hadn’t been a place for florists to buy their flowers.

“There were larger growers back in the 1970S but they would grow just one variety of flower. Because they grew such a vast amount, they had to go to market and to the wholesalers and it was very price dependent. When fuel prices went up it put them out of business.

“Fast forward 50 years and we have the Internet, SO we can go directly to the customer and there is such a good local market for this. There hasn’t been that ability to do that before.”

Flowers From the Farm now has more than 300 small flower growing businesses as members of a steadily growing community, and it’s a supportive one at that. Claire said: “Because all the flowers are grown locally to the area they are being sold in, you don’t have a high level of competition, in fact it would be handy to have more growers in the area to cover the demand but I have seen a couple come and go because actually it’s a very skilled job. It’s a hard physical job.”

With Claire’s flowers you know you are getting them at their very best. “I pick my flowers at 6am and they go in a dark barn. They are bought by my clients that afternoon. I don’t need to use chemicals or extra sugar food, and I’ve already got four days ahead of the supermarkets.”

Growing flowers in the British countryside sounds pretty idyllic but the rose-tinted idea of a flower grower’s life being easy is far removed from reality. Jan Waters from JW Blooms in Somerset works 80 hours a week with one other grower to grow, pick and create all the floristry for weddings and provide postal bouquets – she even runs a coffee shop that opens on Sundays.

With a gardening background Jan was inspired to get into growing in 2008 after she picked all the cornflowers from her allotment and saw the delighted reaction from people as she cycled home with them on her bike. “I realised I could sell them, and then I read about Jane Lindsey who started growing cut flowers on her smallholding in Scotland and thought, ‘if she can do it, so can I.'”

When she first set up Jan said she knew of about half a dozen other growers doing the same thing, but now there are huge numbers and it’s rising. “Sarah Raven was hugely influential and gave people the idea they could do this themselves. Over the past four years the industry has really grown. Gill Hodgson made a huge difference with Flowers From the Farm as well.”

There are some key differences to organically grown and glasshouse flowers, and the main one is the variety available to the buyer. Jan said: “The range of flowers I can offer is far greater as I can include flowers that can’t survive the packing process like lilies, roses or tulips can.

“We have just over an acre and in dahlias alone we have more than 40 different varieties.

They also smell amazing, whereas flowers that have been dipped have no fragrance. I don’t use chemicals, the only things I use to spray the flowers are garlic, chili, and sometimes a seaweed spray, so nothing that I wouldn’t eat myself. I dread to think of the chemicals that are sprayed on many of our imported flowers.”

Jan also shares a concern with many discerning consumers about the issue of waste packaging. Flowers that come into the supermarket are wrapped in cellophane, just one more thing that goes into land fill. “I don’t use packaging, and I don’t use the florists’ oasis bricks which are bad for the environment as well as they don’t biodegrade.”

British flower growers are reliant on the seasons, so the choice is more limited come Christmas and the winter months, however there are growers across the world who are appealing to the British taste for flowers year-round who do use organic and ethical methods of growing.

Rosabie Morton of The Real Flower Company helped to set up the Fairtrade rose farm in Nanyuki, Kenya, where roses are grown year-round, employs 500 local workers and utilises the empty space on scheduled passenger jets to carry their flowers, rather than cargo-only flights.

There will always be a place for year-round flowers, but British organic flower growers are offering a wider choice for the consumer and perhaps when you buy your blooms out of season, you’ll think more about what it took to produce them.

The first time I met with ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo was in central Mexico. We sat at her office, located in the deep mountains of the Sierra Gorda region and I must admit I arrived knowing very little about her, but driven by curiosity. I knew enough to know I would be meeting a highly respected woman and had a hunch that one way or another, she would become a true influence for the rest of my life. A woman of deep spirituality and clear determination with an incomparable passion and dedicated to the defence of what she considers to be her one and only treasure in life. A story anyone can learn from.

In 1986, ‘Pati’ Ruiz founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda), an organisation that today represents a unique model of community ‘conservation economy’. Her goal was to create a sustainable way of living for the more than 120,000 people living inside the Sierra Gorda Reserve, the most densely populated reserve in the entire country; a non-exclusive conservation programme. And so, she did – and still does this – by empowering the historically-marginated female population of the region.

These women have lived always having to keep quiet – oppressed and humiliated by a traditionally ‘macho’ society.  But today, as Pati explains, things have moved on:  “When you hear their motivation as they talk, and how happy they are to be receiving their own extra ‘cents’ per month and when you see that for the first time, some of the fathers have to stay home and take care of their kids because the women have to go work… well, that’s truly my ‘cherry on top of the cake.” Her ultimate goal is to see these women become the voice of conservation in the Sierra Gorda.

Pati Ruiz Corzo spent the first part of her life as a music teacher. In Queretaro, located two hours north of Mexico City, she had spent her time among the upper echelons of Mexican society. She married, had two kids, Beto and Mario, and lived a typically normal life, until one day, she and her husband, decided to leave the city, tired of what she calls ‘the extremes of modern society’.

 “For a long time, I’d put up with the dictates of being ‘modern’; searching for material success, social recognition, being a perfect housewife. There were times when these suffocating dogmas felt a heavy burden.” Pati was certain that she didn’t want her children growing up within a system she didn’t agree with.

”I rebelled against seeing my kids in competition for a ‘camouflaged’ knowledge and not a digested one. In school, their natural talents were being taken away in order to programme them for a stereotype, which I myself was opposed to. I was a teacher for too many years to not be able to see and understand how the gifts of the spirit and the character were being sterilised. Someone’s nature should be respected and should never be expected to accomplish a task imposed by others.”

Such decision was not easy. “I was afraid to leave the only lifestyle I knew, but I wanted to discover other values. I wanted to develop an intimate connection with nature – one that we had clearly lost. I heard shocking examples of kids saying that tomatoes were grown in the back of supermarket stores…my God, they don’t even know were milk comes from, but we can’t blame them for that.”

The Sierra Gorda Reserve has the highest levels of biodiversity in Mexico (the 5^th most biodiverse country in the world) with regions of semi desert, low jungle and a conifer forest that could easily pass for any Canadian landscape. In Pati’s words: ”This is were I found what’s truly real and valuable for me. Pure beauty… I found a treasure. Living surrounded by nature is a pleasure. It’s vibrant and alive. Here, there is no place for lies. We all live without labels”.

This is a woman who has the ability to inspire pretty much everyone that crosses her path. With an imposing charisma, Pati Ruiz manages to speak to large audiences without fear and she almost always ends a speech by singing – reminding us how she has kept alive what she valued the most of her past musical life. An emotional touch that brings pretty much everyone to tears.

She says she was welcomed from the start by the people of the Sierra Gorda. “I was well received from day one. I learned how to talk to them in a way which meant they wouldn’t feel a distance between us and I also brought my accordion with me ande I sang to them. That helped me build real solid bridges with the people of the Sierra Gorda.”

Today Pati Ruiz Corzo shares her passion for conservation and empowerment by holding workshops that attract people from all over the world. She focuses on sharing her message with those who initially were not interested by what she had to say.

When she started out she admits it took time to convince some people to share that journey with her. ”It took some time for some of them to believe me. It wasn’t easy but I felt that the local people just wanted someone to show how we could all move together. Now there’s a huge amount of will from the whole community to overcome all kinds of challenges we face.”

Pati fought not only to convince the local Sierra Gorda community that there was an urgent need to protect their natural heritage, but she has also had to stop many large outside interests and corporations from meddling into the affairs of this 300,000 hectare UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A geographical isolated region, ideal for hidden and illegal activities to occur, such as mining and logging, underpinned by a country swamped by numerous corruption cases which has brought her into contact and conflict with just as many unsavoury individuals.

”I’ve fought all kinds of interests and individuals, some of them truly horrible. I’ve taken on Governors, the Ministry of Transport and the National Electricity Company. They’ve tried to build dams and highways and install high voltage cables. They’ve tried to take natural resources away from the local community, but as I tell them when I send them away; the only interest and objective of this territory is its total and genuine conservation! No one touches it!”

Clearly a position that has earned her more than a few enemies, especially in the Mexican government. “What they sign up for with international treaties should actually be carried out and not just written. They need to re-orientate public policies. There is a slow response from the Government; the politicians are not being efficient and even less farsighted. But I must say that we also lack a civil society capable of playing the role of a real auditor”.

Pati and her supporters are making headway. In the last five years, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda has garnered numerous conservation awards including been awarded with the United Nations Champions of the Earth and the National Geographic World Legacy Award (2012, 2016).

“We adopt and adapt. We’ve try to work inter-institutionally with the local and federal governments, as well as other international organisations, even if it means that sometimes I’m forced to put on the pressure and convince them of many things they wouldn’t had done without our campaigning. You’ve no idea – it’s been like organising an anthill!

“We’ve also tried to create an active public spirit. Mexico is a ‘thirsty’ country with galloping desertification levels and we are a small but significant rescue team”. And her work is not only environmental and economic, but cultural too.

“We organise festivals part of one big cultural party made to recover our identity – to remember that we are not ‘Gringos‘ (North-Americans) but ‘Huastecos‘ (Huastec indigenous people). With so many people migrating north, there’s a strong transculturation phenomena. It’s important to feel you belong to a place.”

I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sierra Gorda and saw the proof of the outcomes Pati talked about. More than a conservationist, she’s an activist in a country that lacks the courage to value such citizens and she’s an example in Mexico and abroad, to anyone who lacks the motivation to speak out and act on their own social conscience.

“Only civil society can change this situation,” she says. “Local answers are the only solution. We have to put our hearts and our dedication into the work and put pressure on local authorities to do the right thing. We have to innovate, do things with love and for the wellbeing of all. 

“I want a total revolution! A change of values where we seek full abundance for everyone, where we recognise nature as a vital part of our lives and where we learn to treat nature with respect and care. I don’t believe in accumulating more and more. What accumulates stagnates and what stagnates rots. I believe in the simplicity of life. Once you know the true value of what is sacred you’ll have the energy to keep going to make those changes.”

This Author:

Tadzio Mac Gregor was born in Mexico City to a French mother and a Mexican father. He has been involved with several social and environmental projects in Mexico, Asia and the Middle East. Having started working recently as a freelance journalist specializing in foreign affairs, environmental conservation and human development he now contributes to several newspapers in Mexico, France, Brazil and the United States

Globally the cut flower business is worth $100 billion a year, and according to fairtrade.org the main producers are the Netherlands, accounting for 55%, Columbia 18%, Ecuador 9% and Kenya 6%. The UK is the third largest consumer for cut blooms, pipped only by the USA and Germany.

Largely grown in glasshouses, 70% of the world’s flowers arrive via the Netherlands in one of three enormous flower “markets” – take for example the one million metre-squared Aalsmeer flower auction – which has the largest footprint of a building in the world, equating to 128 acres.

But travelling takes its toll on flowers. Not only do they require an enormous amount of energy to be cooled to 2 degrees, and put in a sleep-like trance, they are then sprayed with fungicide, x-rayed, put on a plane, and dipped in silver nitrate where they are mummified and lose all their scent, requiring the consumer to add a sachet of “life-giving” sugar solution to already four-day-old blooms.

Buying locally means that you are ensured a longer shelf life from your flowers, and your bouquet will remain smelling fragrant. It also means you get more choice as many delicate flowers such as sweet peas can’t cope with this process.

Claire Brown, owner of Surry flower farm Plant Passion, and volunteer at Gill Hodgson’s initiative Flowers From the Farm, grows more than 250 varieties for three main markets; local customers, florists and “DIY brides”, who buy the flowers and then create their own bouquets and displays.

With a background in horticulture, Claire seized an opportunity when she saw a gap in the market four years ago: “There has been huge growth in the industry. Before local growers started up there just hadn’t been a place for florists to buy their flowers.

“There were larger growers back in the 1970S but they would grow just one variety of flower. Because they grew such a vast amount, they had to go to market and to the wholesalers and it was very price dependent. When fuel prices went up it put them out of business.

“Fast forward 50 years and we have the Internet, SO we can go directly to the customer and there is such a good local market for this. There hasn’t been that ability to do that before.”

Flowers From the Farm now has more than 300 small flower growing businesses as members of a steadily growing community, and it’s a supportive one at that. Claire said: “Because all the flowers are grown locally to the area they are being sold in, you don’t have a high level of competition, in fact it would be handy to have more growers in the area to cover the demand but I have seen a couple come and go because actually it’s a very skilled job. It’s a hard physical job.”

With Claire’s flowers you know you are getting them at their very best. “I pick my flowers at 6am and they go in a dark barn. They are bought by my clients that afternoon. I don’t need to use chemicals or extra sugar food, and I’ve already got four days ahead of the supermarkets.”

Growing flowers in the British countryside sounds pretty idyllic but the rose-tinted idea of a flower grower’s life being easy is far removed from reality. Jan Waters from JW Blooms in Somerset works 80 hours a week with one other grower to grow, pick and create all the floristry for weddings and provide postal bouquets – she even runs a coffee shop that opens on Sundays.

With a gardening background Jan was inspired to get into growing in 2008 after she picked all the cornflowers from her allotment and saw the delighted reaction from people as she cycled home with them on her bike. “I realised I could sell them, and then I read about Jane Lindsey who started growing cut flowers on her smallholding in Scotland and thought, ‘if she can do it, so can I.'”

When she first set up Jan said she knew of about half a dozen other growers doing the same thing, but now there are huge numbers and it’s rising. “Sarah Raven was hugely influential and gave people the idea they could do this themselves. Over the past four years the industry has really grown. Gill Hodgson made a huge difference with Flowers From the Farm as well.”

There are some key differences to organically grown and glasshouse flowers, and the main one is the variety available to the buyer. Jan said: “The range of flowers I can offer is far greater as I can include flowers that can’t survive the packing process like lilies, roses or tulips can.

“We have just over an acre and in dahlias alone we have more than 40 different varieties.

They also smell amazing, whereas flowers that have been dipped have no fragrance. I don’t use chemicals, the only things I use to spray the flowers are garlic, chili, and sometimes a seaweed spray, so nothing that I wouldn’t eat myself. I dread to think of the chemicals that are sprayed on many of our imported flowers.”

Jan also shares a concern with many discerning consumers about the issue of waste packaging. Flowers that come into the supermarket are wrapped in cellophane, just one more thing that goes into land fill. “I don’t use packaging, and I don’t use the florists’ oasis bricks which are bad for the environment as well as they don’t biodegrade.”

British flower growers are reliant on the seasons, so the choice is more limited come Christmas and the winter months, however there are growers across the world who are appealing to the British taste for flowers year-round who do use organic and ethical methods of growing.

Rosabie Morton of The Real Flower Company helped to set up the Fairtrade rose farm in Nanyuki, Kenya, where roses are grown year-round, employs 500 local workers and utilises the empty space on scheduled passenger jets to carry their flowers, rather than cargo-only flights.

There will always be a place for year-round flowers, but British organic flower growers are offering a wider choice for the consumer and perhaps when you buy your blooms out of season, you’ll think more about what it took to produce them.

The first time I met with ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo was in central Mexico. We sat at her office, located in the deep mountains of the Sierra Gorda region and I must admit I arrived knowing very little about her, but driven by curiosity. I knew enough to know I would be meeting a highly respected woman and had a hunch that one way or another, she would become a true influence for the rest of my life. A woman of deep spirituality and clear determination with an incomparable passion and dedicated to the defence of what she considers to be her one and only treasure in life. A story anyone can learn from.

In 1986, ‘Pati’ Ruiz founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda), an organisation that today represents a unique model of community ‘conservation economy’. Her goal was to create a sustainable way of living for the more than 120,000 people living inside the Sierra Gorda Reserve, the most densely populated reserve in the entire country; a non-exclusive conservation programme. And so, she did – and still does this – by empowering the historically-marginated female population of the region.

These women have lived always having to keep quiet – oppressed and humiliated by a traditionally ‘macho’ society.  But today, as Pati explains, things have moved on:  “When you hear their motivation as they talk, and how happy they are to be receiving their own extra ‘cents’ per month and when you see that for the first time, some of the fathers have to stay home and take care of their kids because the women have to go work… well, that’s truly my ‘cherry on top of the cake.” Her ultimate goal is to see these women become the voice of conservation in the Sierra Gorda.

Pati Ruiz Corzo spent the first part of her life as a music teacher. In Queretaro, located two hours north of Mexico City, she had spent her time among the upper echelons of Mexican society. She married, had two kids, Beto and Mario, and lived a typically normal life, until one day, she and her husband, decided to leave the city, tired of what she calls ‘the extremes of modern society’.

 “For a long time, I’d put up with the dictates of being ‘modern’; searching for material success, social recognition, being a perfect housewife. There were times when these suffocating dogmas felt a heavy burden.” Pati was certain that she didn’t want her children growing up within a system she didn’t agree with.

”I rebelled against seeing my kids in competition for a ‘camouflaged’ knowledge and not a digested one. In school, their natural talents were being taken away in order to programme them for a stereotype, which I myself was opposed to. I was a teacher for too many years to not be able to see and understand how the gifts of the spirit and the character were being sterilised. Someone’s nature should be respected and should never be expected to accomplish a task imposed by others.”

Such decision was not easy. “I was afraid to leave the only lifestyle I knew, but I wanted to discover other values. I wanted to develop an intimate connection with nature – one that we had clearly lost. I heard shocking examples of kids saying that tomatoes were grown in the back of supermarket stores…my God, they don’t even know were milk comes from, but we can’t blame them for that.”

The Sierra Gorda Reserve has the highest levels of biodiversity in Mexico (the 5^th most biodiverse country in the world) with regions of semi desert, low jungle and a conifer forest that could easily pass for any Canadian landscape. In Pati’s words: ”This is were I found what’s truly real and valuable for me. Pure beauty… I found a treasure. Living surrounded by nature is a pleasure. It’s vibrant and alive. Here, there is no place for lies. We all live without labels”.

This is a woman who has the ability to inspire pretty much everyone that crosses her path. With an imposing charisma, Pati Ruiz manages to speak to large audiences without fear and she almost always ends a speech by singing – reminding us how she has kept alive what she valued the most of her past musical life. An emotional touch that brings pretty much everyone to tears.

She says she was welcomed from the start by the people of the Sierra Gorda. “I was well received from day one. I learned how to talk to them in a way which meant they wouldn’t feel a distance between us and I also brought my accordion with me ande I sang to them. That helped me build real solid bridges with the people of the Sierra Gorda.”

Today Pati Ruiz Corzo shares her passion for conservation and empowerment by holding workshops that attract people from all over the world. She focuses on sharing her message with those who initially were not interested by what she had to say.

When she started out she admits it took time to convince some people to share that journey with her. ”It took some time for some of them to believe me. It wasn’t easy but I felt that the local people just wanted someone to show how we could all move together. Now there’s a huge amount of will from the whole community to overcome all kinds of challenges we face.”

Pati fought not only to convince the local Sierra Gorda community that there was an urgent need to protect their natural heritage, but she has also had to stop many large outside interests and corporations from meddling into the affairs of this 300,000 hectare UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A geographical isolated region, ideal for hidden and illegal activities to occur, such as mining and logging, underpinned by a country swamped by numerous corruption cases which has brought her into contact and conflict with just as many unsavoury individuals.

”I’ve fought all kinds of interests and individuals, some of them truly horrible. I’ve taken on Governors, the Ministry of Transport and the National Electricity Company. They’ve tried to build dams and highways and install high voltage cables. They’ve tried to take natural resources away from the local community, but as I tell them when I send them away; the only interest and objective of this territory is its total and genuine conservation! No one touches it!”

Clearly a position that has earned her more than a few enemies, especially in the Mexican government. “What they sign up for with international treaties should actually be carried out and not just written. They need to re-orientate public policies. There is a slow response from the Government; the politicians are not being efficient and even less farsighted. But I must say that we also lack a civil society capable of playing the role of a real auditor”.

Pati and her supporters are making headway. In the last five years, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda has garnered numerous conservation awards including been awarded with the United Nations Champions of the Earth and the National Geographic World Legacy Award (2012, 2016).

“We adopt and adapt. We’ve try to work inter-institutionally with the local and federal governments, as well as other international organisations, even if it means that sometimes I’m forced to put on the pressure and convince them of many things they wouldn’t had done without our campaigning. You’ve no idea – it’s been like organising an anthill!

“We’ve also tried to create an active public spirit. Mexico is a ‘thirsty’ country with galloping desertification levels and we are a small but significant rescue team”. And her work is not only environmental and economic, but cultural too.

“We organise festivals part of one big cultural party made to recover our identity – to remember that we are not ‘Gringos‘ (North-Americans) but ‘Huastecos‘ (Huastec indigenous people). With so many people migrating north, there’s a strong transculturation phenomena. It’s important to feel you belong to a place.”

I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sierra Gorda and saw the proof of the outcomes Pati talked about. More than a conservationist, she’s an activist in a country that lacks the courage to value such citizens and she’s an example in Mexico and abroad, to anyone who lacks the motivation to speak out and act on their own social conscience.

“Only civil society can change this situation,” she says. “Local answers are the only solution. We have to put our hearts and our dedication into the work and put pressure on local authorities to do the right thing. We have to innovate, do things with love and for the wellbeing of all. 

“I want a total revolution! A change of values where we seek full abundance for everyone, where we recognise nature as a vital part of our lives and where we learn to treat nature with respect and care. I don’t believe in accumulating more and more. What accumulates stagnates and what stagnates rots. I believe in the simplicity of life. Once you know the true value of what is sacred you’ll have the energy to keep going to make those changes.”

This Author:

Tadzio Mac Gregor was born in Mexico City to a French mother and a Mexican father. He has been involved with several social and environmental projects in Mexico, Asia and the Middle East. Having started working recently as a freelance journalist specializing in foreign affairs, environmental conservation and human development he now contributes to several newspapers in Mexico, France, Brazil and the United States

Globally the cut flower business is worth $100 billion a year, and according to fairtrade.org the main producers are the Netherlands, accounting for 55%, Columbia 18%, Ecuador 9% and Kenya 6%. The UK is the third largest consumer for cut blooms, pipped only by the USA and Germany.

Largely grown in glasshouses, 70% of the world’s flowers arrive via the Netherlands in one of three enormous flower “markets” – take for example the one million metre-squared Aalsmeer flower auction – which has the largest footprint of a building in the world, equating to 128 acres.

But travelling takes its toll on flowers. Not only do they require an enormous amount of energy to be cooled to 2 degrees, and put in a sleep-like trance, they are then sprayed with fungicide, x-rayed, put on a plane, and dipped in silver nitrate where they are mummified and lose all their scent, requiring the consumer to add a sachet of “life-giving” sugar solution to already four-day-old blooms.

Buying locally means that you are ensured a longer shelf life from your flowers, and your bouquet will remain smelling fragrant. It also means you get more choice as many delicate flowers such as sweet peas can’t cope with this process.

Claire Brown, owner of Surry flower farm Plant Passion, and volunteer at Gill Hodgson’s initiative Flowers From the Farm, grows more than 250 varieties for three main markets; local customers, florists and “DIY brides”, who buy the flowers and then create their own bouquets and displays.

With a background in horticulture, Claire seized an opportunity when she saw a gap in the market four years ago: “There has been huge growth in the industry. Before local growers started up there just hadn’t been a place for florists to buy their flowers.

“There were larger growers back in the 1970S but they would grow just one variety of flower. Because they grew such a vast amount, they had to go to market and to the wholesalers and it was very price dependent. When fuel prices went up it put them out of business.

“Fast forward 50 years and we have the Internet, SO we can go directly to the customer and there is such a good local market for this. There hasn’t been that ability to do that before.”

Flowers From the Farm now has more than 300 small flower growing businesses as members of a steadily growing community, and it’s a supportive one at that. Claire said: “Because all the flowers are grown locally to the area they are being sold in, you don’t have a high level of competition, in fact it would be handy to have more growers in the area to cover the demand but I have seen a couple come and go because actually it’s a very skilled job. It’s a hard physical job.”

With Claire’s flowers you know you are getting them at their very best. “I pick my flowers at 6am and they go in a dark barn. They are bought by my clients that afternoon. I don’t need to use chemicals or extra sugar food, and I’ve already got four days ahead of the supermarkets.”

Growing flowers in the British countryside sounds pretty idyllic but the rose-tinted idea of a flower grower’s life being easy is far removed from reality. Jan Waters from JW Blooms in Somerset works 80 hours a week with one other grower to grow, pick and create all the floristry for weddings and provide postal bouquets – she even runs a coffee shop that opens on Sundays.

With a gardening background Jan was inspired to get into growing in 2008 after she picked all the cornflowers from her allotment and saw the delighted reaction from people as she cycled home with them on her bike. “I realised I could sell them, and then I read about Jane Lindsey who started growing cut flowers on her smallholding in Scotland and thought, ‘if she can do it, so can I.'”

When she first set up Jan said she knew of about half a dozen other growers doing the same thing, but now there are huge numbers and it’s rising. “Sarah Raven was hugely influential and gave people the idea they could do this themselves. Over the past four years the industry has really grown. Gill Hodgson made a huge difference with Flowers From the Farm as well.”

There are some key differences to organically grown and glasshouse flowers, and the main one is the variety available to the buyer. Jan said: “The range of flowers I can offer is far greater as I can include flowers that can’t survive the packing process like lilies, roses or tulips can.

“We have just over an acre and in dahlias alone we have more than 40 different varieties.

They also smell amazing, whereas flowers that have been dipped have no fragrance. I don’t use chemicals, the only things I use to spray the flowers are garlic, chili, and sometimes a seaweed spray, so nothing that I wouldn’t eat myself. I dread to think of the chemicals that are sprayed on many of our imported flowers.”

Jan also shares a concern with many discerning consumers about the issue of waste packaging. Flowers that come into the supermarket are wrapped in cellophane, just one more thing that goes into land fill. “I don’t use packaging, and I don’t use the florists’ oasis bricks which are bad for the environment as well as they don’t biodegrade.”

British flower growers are reliant on the seasons, so the choice is more limited come Christmas and the winter months, however there are growers across the world who are appealing to the British taste for flowers year-round who do use organic and ethical methods of growing.

Rosabie Morton of The Real Flower Company helped to set up the Fairtrade rose farm in Nanyuki, Kenya, where roses are grown year-round, employs 500 local workers and utilises the empty space on scheduled passenger jets to carry their flowers, rather than cargo-only flights.

There will always be a place for year-round flowers, but British organic flower growers are offering a wider choice for the consumer and perhaps when you buy your blooms out of season, you’ll think more about what it took to produce them.

The first time I met with ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo was in central Mexico. We sat at her office, located in the deep mountains of the Sierra Gorda region and I must admit I arrived knowing very little about her, but driven by curiosity. I knew enough to know I would be meeting a highly respected woman and had a hunch that one way or another, she would become a true influence for the rest of my life. A woman of deep spirituality and clear determination with an incomparable passion and dedicated to the defence of what she considers to be her one and only treasure in life. A story anyone can learn from.

In 1986, ‘Pati’ Ruiz founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda), an organisation that today represents a unique model of community ‘conservation economy’. Her goal was to create a sustainable way of living for the more than 120,000 people living inside the Sierra Gorda Reserve, the most densely populated reserve in the entire country; a non-exclusive conservation programme. And so, she did – and still does this – by empowering the historically-marginated female population of the region.

These women have lived always having to keep quiet – oppressed and humiliated by a traditionally ‘macho’ society.  But today, as Pati explains, things have moved on:  “When you hear their motivation as they talk, and how happy they are to be receiving their own extra ‘cents’ per month and when you see that for the first time, some of the fathers have to stay home and take care of their kids because the women have to go work… well, that’s truly my ‘cherry on top of the cake.” Her ultimate goal is to see these women become the voice of conservation in the Sierra Gorda.

Pati Ruiz Corzo spent the first part of her life as a music teacher. In Queretaro, located two hours north of Mexico City, she had spent her time among the upper echelons of Mexican society. She married, had two kids, Beto and Mario, and lived a typically normal life, until one day, she and her husband, decided to leave the city, tired of what she calls ‘the extremes of modern society’.

 “For a long time, I’d put up with the dictates of being ‘modern’; searching for material success, social recognition, being a perfect housewife. There were times when these suffocating dogmas felt a heavy burden.” Pati was certain that she didn’t want her children growing up within a system she didn’t agree with.

”I rebelled against seeing my kids in competition for a ‘camouflaged’ knowledge and not a digested one. In school, their natural talents were being taken away in order to programme them for a stereotype, which I myself was opposed to. I was a teacher for too many years to not be able to see and understand how the gifts of the spirit and the character were being sterilised. Someone’s nature should be respected and should never be expected to accomplish a task imposed by others.”

Such decision was not easy. “I was afraid to leave the only lifestyle I knew, but I wanted to discover other values. I wanted to develop an intimate connection with nature – one that we had clearly lost. I heard shocking examples of kids saying that tomatoes were grown in the back of supermarket stores…my God, they don’t even know were milk comes from, but we can’t blame them for that.”

The Sierra Gorda Reserve has the highest levels of biodiversity in Mexico (the 5^th most biodiverse country in the world) with regions of semi desert, low jungle and a conifer forest that could easily pass for any Canadian landscape. In Pati’s words: ”This is were I found what’s truly real and valuable for me. Pure beauty… I found a treasure. Living surrounded by nature is a pleasure. It’s vibrant and alive. Here, there is no place for lies. We all live without labels”.

This is a woman who has the ability to inspire pretty much everyone that crosses her path. With an imposing charisma, Pati Ruiz manages to speak to large audiences without fear and she almost always ends a speech by singing – reminding us how she has kept alive what she valued the most of her past musical life. An emotional touch that brings pretty much everyone to tears.

She says she was welcomed from the start by the people of the Sierra Gorda. “I was well received from day one. I learned how to talk to them in a way which meant they wouldn’t feel a distance between us and I also brought my accordion with me ande I sang to them. That helped me build real solid bridges with the people of the Sierra Gorda.”

Today Pati Ruiz Corzo shares her passion for conservation and empowerment by holding workshops that attract people from all over the world. She focuses on sharing her message with those who initially were not interested by what she had to say.

When she started out she admits it took time to convince some people to share that journey with her. ”It took some time for some of them to believe me. It wasn’t easy but I felt that the local people just wanted someone to show how we could all move together. Now there’s a huge amount of will from the whole community to overcome all kinds of challenges we face.”

Pati fought not only to convince the local Sierra Gorda community that there was an urgent need to protect their natural heritage, but she has also had to stop many large outside interests and corporations from meddling into the affairs of this 300,000 hectare UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A geographical isolated region, ideal for hidden and illegal activities to occur, such as mining and logging, underpinned by a country swamped by numerous corruption cases which has brought her into contact and conflict with just as many unsavoury individuals.

”I’ve fought all kinds of interests and individuals, some of them truly horrible. I’ve taken on Governors, the Ministry of Transport and the National Electricity Company. They’ve tried to build dams and highways and install high voltage cables. They’ve tried to take natural resources away from the local community, but as I tell them when I send them away; the only interest and objective of this territory is its total and genuine conservation! No one touches it!”

Clearly a position that has earned her more than a few enemies, especially in the Mexican government. “What they sign up for with international treaties should actually be carried out and not just written. They need to re-orientate public policies. There is a slow response from the Government; the politicians are not being efficient and even less farsighted. But I must say that we also lack a civil society capable of playing the role of a real auditor”.

Pati and her supporters are making headway. In the last five years, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda has garnered numerous conservation awards including been awarded with the United Nations Champions of the Earth and the National Geographic World Legacy Award (2012, 2016).

“We adopt and adapt. We’ve try to work inter-institutionally with the local and federal governments, as well as other international organisations, even if it means that sometimes I’m forced to put on the pressure and convince them of many things they wouldn’t had done without our campaigning. You’ve no idea – it’s been like organising an anthill!

“We’ve also tried to create an active public spirit. Mexico is a ‘thirsty’ country with galloping desertification levels and we are a small but significant rescue team”. And her work is not only environmental and economic, but cultural too.

“We organise festivals part of one big cultural party made to recover our identity – to remember that we are not ‘Gringos‘ (North-Americans) but ‘Huastecos‘ (Huastec indigenous people). With so many people migrating north, there’s a strong transculturation phenomena. It’s important to feel you belong to a place.”

I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sierra Gorda and saw the proof of the outcomes Pati talked about. More than a conservationist, she’s an activist in a country that lacks the courage to value such citizens and she’s an example in Mexico and abroad, to anyone who lacks the motivation to speak out and act on their own social conscience.

“Only civil society can change this situation,” she says. “Local answers are the only solution. We have to put our hearts and our dedication into the work and put pressure on local authorities to do the right thing. We have to innovate, do things with love and for the wellbeing of all. 

“I want a total revolution! A change of values where we seek full abundance for everyone, where we recognise nature as a vital part of our lives and where we learn to treat nature with respect and care. I don’t believe in accumulating more and more. What accumulates stagnates and what stagnates rots. I believe in the simplicity of life. Once you know the true value of what is sacred you’ll have the energy to keep going to make those changes.”

This Author:

Tadzio Mac Gregor was born in Mexico City to a French mother and a Mexican father. He has been involved with several social and environmental projects in Mexico, Asia and the Middle East. Having started working recently as a freelance journalist specializing in foreign affairs, environmental conservation and human development he now contributes to several newspapers in Mexico, France, Brazil and the United States

Globally the cut flower business is worth $100 billion a year, and according to fairtrade.org the main producers are the Netherlands, accounting for 55%, Columbia 18%, Ecuador 9% and Kenya 6%. The UK is the third largest consumer for cut blooms, pipped only by the USA and Germany.

Largely grown in glasshouses, 70% of the world’s flowers arrive via the Netherlands in one of three enormous flower “markets” – take for example the one million metre-squared Aalsmeer flower auction – which has the largest footprint of a building in the world, equating to 128 acres.

But travelling takes its toll on flowers. Not only do they require an enormous amount of energy to be cooled to 2 degrees, and put in a sleep-like trance, they are then sprayed with fungicide, x-rayed, put on a plane, and dipped in silver nitrate where they are mummified and lose all their scent, requiring the consumer to add a sachet of “life-giving” sugar solution to already four-day-old blooms.

Buying locally means that you are ensured a longer shelf life from your flowers, and your bouquet will remain smelling fragrant. It also means you get more choice as many delicate flowers such as sweet peas can’t cope with this process.

Claire Brown, owner of Surry flower farm Plant Passion, and volunteer at Gill Hodgson’s initiative Flowers From the Farm, grows more than 250 varieties for three main markets; local customers, florists and “DIY brides”, who buy the flowers and then create their own bouquets and displays.

With a background in horticulture, Claire seized an opportunity when she saw a gap in the market four years ago: “There has been huge growth in the industry. Before local growers started up there just hadn’t been a place for florists to buy their flowers.

“There were larger growers back in the 1970S but they would grow just one variety of flower. Because they grew such a vast amount, they had to go to market and to the wholesalers and it was very price dependent. When fuel prices went up it put them out of business.

“Fast forward 50 years and we have the Internet, SO we can go directly to the customer and there is such a good local market for this. There hasn’t been that ability to do that before.”

Flowers From the Farm now has more than 300 small flower growing businesses as members of a steadily growing community, and it’s a supportive one at that. Claire said: “Because all the flowers are grown locally to the area they are being sold in, you don’t have a high level of competition, in fact it would be handy to have more growers in the area to cover the demand but I have seen a couple come and go because actually it’s a very skilled job. It’s a hard physical job.”

With Claire’s flowers you know you are getting them at their very best. “I pick my flowers at 6am and they go in a dark barn. They are bought by my clients that afternoon. I don’t need to use chemicals or extra sugar food, and I’ve already got four days ahead of the supermarkets.”

Growing flowers in the British countryside sounds pretty idyllic but the rose-tinted idea of a flower grower’s life being easy is far removed from reality. Jan Waters from JW Blooms in Somerset works 80 hours a week with one other grower to grow, pick and create all the floristry for weddings and provide postal bouquets – she even runs a coffee shop that opens on Sundays.

With a gardening background Jan was inspired to get into growing in 2008 after she picked all the cornflowers from her allotment and saw the delighted reaction from people as she cycled home with them on her bike. “I realised I could sell them, and then I read about Jane Lindsey who started growing cut flowers on her smallholding in Scotland and thought, ‘if she can do it, so can I.'”

When she first set up Jan said she knew of about half a dozen other growers doing the same thing, but now there are huge numbers and it’s rising. “Sarah Raven was hugely influential and gave people the idea they could do this themselves. Over the past four years the industry has really grown. Gill Hodgson made a huge difference with Flowers From the Farm as well.”

There are some key differences to organically grown and glasshouse flowers, and the main one is the variety available to the buyer. Jan said: “The range of flowers I can offer is far greater as I can include flowers that can’t survive the packing process like lilies, roses or tulips can.

“We have just over an acre and in dahlias alone we have more than 40 different varieties.

They also smell amazing, whereas flowers that have been dipped have no fragrance. I don’t use chemicals, the only things I use to spray the flowers are garlic, chili, and sometimes a seaweed spray, so nothing that I wouldn’t eat myself. I dread to think of the chemicals that are sprayed on many of our imported flowers.”

Jan also shares a concern with many discerning consumers about the issue of waste packaging. Flowers that come into the supermarket are wrapped in cellophane, just one more thing that goes into land fill. “I don’t use packaging, and I don’t use the florists’ oasis bricks which are bad for the environment as well as they don’t biodegrade.”

British flower growers are reliant on the seasons, so the choice is more limited come Christmas and the winter months, however there are growers across the world who are appealing to the British taste for flowers year-round who do use organic and ethical methods of growing.

Rosabie Morton of The Real Flower Company helped to set up the Fairtrade rose farm in Nanyuki, Kenya, where roses are grown year-round, employs 500 local workers and utilises the empty space on scheduled passenger jets to carry their flowers, rather than cargo-only flights.

There will always be a place for year-round flowers, but British organic flower growers are offering a wider choice for the consumer and perhaps when you buy your blooms out of season, you’ll think more about what it took to produce them.

The first time I met with ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo was in central Mexico. We sat at her office, located in the deep mountains of the Sierra Gorda region and I must admit I arrived knowing very little about her, but driven by curiosity. I knew enough to know I would be meeting a highly respected woman and had a hunch that one way or another, she would become a true influence for the rest of my life. A woman of deep spirituality and clear determination with an incomparable passion and dedicated to the defence of what she considers to be her one and only treasure in life. A story anyone can learn from.

In 1986, ‘Pati’ Ruiz founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group (Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda), an organisation that today represents a unique model of community ‘conservation economy’. Her goal was to create a sustainable way of living for the more than 120,000 people living inside the Sierra Gorda Reserve, the most densely populated reserve in the entire country; a non-exclusive conservation programme. And so, she did – and still does this – by empowering the historically-marginated female population of the region.

These women have lived always having to keep quiet – oppressed and humiliated by a traditionally ‘macho’ society.  But today, as Pati explains, things have moved on:  “When you hear their motivation as they talk, and how happy they are to be receiving their own extra ‘cents’ per month and when you see that for the first time, some of the fathers have to stay home and take care of their kids because the women have to go work… well, that’s truly my ‘cherry on top of the cake.” Her ultimate goal is to see these women become the voice of conservation in the Sierra Gorda.

Pati Ruiz Corzo spent the first part of her life as a music teacher. In Queretaro, located two hours north of Mexico City, she had spent her time among the upper echelons of Mexican society. She married, had two kids, Beto and Mario, and lived a typically normal life, until one day, she and her husband, decided to leave the city, tired of what she calls ‘the extremes of modern society’.

 “For a long time, I’d put up with the dictates of being ‘modern’; searching for material success, social recognition, being a perfect housewife. There were times when these suffocating dogmas felt a heavy burden.” Pati was certain that she didn’t want her children growing up within a system she didn’t agree with.

”I rebelled against seeing my kids in competition for a ‘camouflaged’ knowledge and not a digested one. In school, their natural talents were being taken away in order to programme them for a stereotype, which I myself was opposed to. I was a teacher for too many years to not be able to see and understand how the gifts of the spirit and the character were being sterilised. Someone’s nature should be respected and should never be expected to accomplish a task imposed by others.”

Such decision was not easy. “I was afraid to leave the only lifestyle I knew, but I wanted to discover other values. I wanted to develop an intimate connection with nature – one that we had clearly lost. I heard shocking examples of kids saying that tomatoes were grown in the back of supermarket stores…my God, they don’t even know were milk comes from, but we can’t blame them for that.”

The Sierra Gorda Reserve has the highest levels of biodiversity in Mexico (the 5^th most biodiverse country in the world) with regions of semi desert, low jungle and a conifer forest that could easily pass for any Canadian landscape. In Pati’s words: ”This is were I found what’s truly real and valuable for me. Pure beauty… I found a treasure. Living surrounded by nature is a pleasure. It’s vibrant and alive. Here, there is no place for lies. We all live without labels”.

This is a woman who has the ability to inspire pretty much everyone that crosses her path. With an imposing charisma, Pati Ruiz manages to speak to large audiences without fear and she almost always ends a speech by singing – reminding us how she has kept alive what she valued the most of her past musical life. An emotional touch that brings pretty much everyone to tears.

She says she was welcomed from the start by the people of the Sierra Gorda. “I was well received from day one. I learned how to talk to them in a way which meant they wouldn’t feel a distance between us and I also brought my accordion with me ande I sang to them. That helped me build real solid bridges with the people of the Sierra Gorda.”

Today Pati Ruiz Corzo shares her passion for conservation and empowerment by holding workshops that attract people from all over the world. She focuses on sharing her message with those who initially were not interested by what she had to say.

When she started out she admits it took time to convince some people to share that journey with her. ”It took some time for some of them to believe me. It wasn’t easy but I felt that the local people just wanted someone to show how we could all move together. Now there’s a huge amount of will from the whole community to overcome all kinds of challenges we face.”

Pati fought not only to convince the local Sierra Gorda community that there was an urgent need to protect their natural heritage, but she has also had to stop many large outside interests and corporations from meddling into the affairs of this 300,000 hectare UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. A geographical isolated region, ideal for hidden and illegal activities to occur, such as mining and logging, underpinned by a country swamped by numerous corruption cases which has brought her into contact and conflict with just as many unsavoury individuals.

”I’ve fought all kinds of interests and individuals, some of them truly horrible. I’ve taken on Governors, the Ministry of Transport and the National Electricity Company. They’ve tried to build dams and highways and install high voltage cables. They’ve tried to take natural resources away from the local community, but as I tell them when I send them away; the only interest and objective of this territory is its total and genuine conservation! No one touches it!”

Clearly a position that has earned her more than a few enemies, especially in the Mexican government. “What they sign up for with international treaties should actually be carried out and not just written. They need to re-orientate public policies. There is a slow response from the Government; the politicians are not being efficient and even less farsighted. But I must say that we also lack a civil society capable of playing the role of a real auditor”.

Pati and her supporters are making headway. In the last five years, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda has garnered numerous conservation awards including been awarded with the United Nations Champions of the Earth and the National Geographic World Legacy Award (2012, 2016).

“We adopt and adapt. We’ve try to work inter-institutionally with the local and federal governments, as well as other international organisations, even if it means that sometimes I’m forced to put on the pressure and convince them of many things they wouldn’t had done without our campaigning. You’ve no idea – it’s been like organising an anthill!

“We’ve also tried to create an active public spirit. Mexico is a ‘thirsty’ country with galloping desertification levels and we are a small but significant rescue team”. And her work is not only environmental and economic, but cultural too.

“We organise festivals part of one big cultural party made to recover our identity – to remember that we are not ‘Gringos‘ (North-Americans) but ‘Huastecos‘ (Huastec indigenous people). With so many people migrating north, there’s a strong transculturation phenomena. It’s important to feel you belong to a place.”

I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sierra Gorda and saw the proof of the outcomes Pati talked about. More than a conservationist, she’s an activist in a country that lacks the courage to value such citizens and she’s an example in Mexico and abroad, to anyone who lacks the motivation to speak out and act on their own social conscience.

“Only civil society can change this situation,” she says. “Local answers are the only solution. We have to put our hearts and our dedication into the work and put pressure on local authorities to do the right thing. We have to innovate, do things with love and for the wellbeing of all. 

“I want a total revolution! A change of values where we seek full abundance for everyone, where we recognise nature as a vital part of our lives and where we learn to treat nature with respect and care. I don’t believe in accumulating more and more. What accumulates stagnates and what stagnates rots. I believe in the simplicity of life. Once you know the true value of what is sacred you’ll have the energy to keep going to make those changes.”

This Author:

Tadzio Mac Gregor was born in Mexico City to a French mother and a Mexican father. He has been involved with several social and environmental projects in Mexico, Asia and the Middle East. Having started working recently as a freelance journalist specializing in foreign affairs, environmental conservation and human development he now contributes to several newspapers in Mexico, France, Brazil and the United States