gear—just a rubber apron and gloves— and one of the managers smiled at me and said, “When you use less chemicals, you don’t need all that protection.” That’s when I realized that what I couldn’t see made all the difference. What they weren’t doing was every bit as important as what they were doing.

Less toxic pesticides mean shorter re-entry restrictions in greenhouses. Careful management of the plants means that fewer roses require a postharvest dip, and those that do require treatment are dipped in the least toxic fungicide available. Like other high-end growers, Nevado plants under 28,000 plants per acre, which allows for more air circulation and lets them pay more attention to each plant. They also limit their production to about 35 varieties, but within their selection I found many of my new-found favorites. The lime green ‘Limbo’ grows there, as does the tricolor pink, cream, and green ‘Esperance’ and ‘Red Intuition’, a red rose with a kind of variegated pattern on its petals, as if darker red paint had been splashed over them.

‘Red Intuition’ is a good example of the kind of premium rose that is almost impossible to find in the United States. Each flower has an enormous head that grows on perfectly straight, five-foot-tall stems. At the farm these

PROvIDINg TLC: in addition to treating its crops with the utmost care, nevado Ecuador nurtures its workers, offering daycare, onsite meals, and medical care.

roses were exhibited in sturdy glass floor vases. It would be hard to imagine a room, except perhaps a ballroom, that would be large enough to accommodate a bouquet of these sitting on a table.

By commercial rose-growing standards, Nevado is small—the farm occupies only about 75 acres and produces 20 million roses a year, two million of which go to the U.S. market— and it employs only 400 employees, all of whom enjoy the protections and benefits mandated by their many certifications. That means they have the right to organize and the right to present grievances, and they get

additional protections against pesticide exposure, harassment, and forced overtime, among other hazards of the job. The company provides an on-site lunch, a community room, and medical and child-care programs.

Each bunch of Nevado roses is sold with a sticker inside the sleeve that reads “Nevado Ecuador, Roses with a Conscience.” Below that, it reads “Handmade by” and a blank where the worker writes her name. Those stickers are there so that each woman can leave her mark on the roses before they go out into the world. A person harvested these roses, the sticker implies—they’re from a person who matters. 0

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