I’m not always a fan of the way in which profitability objectives are designed into remediation plans, but the hands-on nature of cut flower farming lends itself well to this. It also has a low enough barrier to entry that people at various points of income could participate, which could help drive adoption of these techniques.

There are some growers who have done trials with home made biochar as the only substrate for flowering plants and had successful results. I could envision pairing a biochar substrate with the floating flower farms to increase the amount of filtering being performed; between the removal of plant material for the flowers and the potential to use the “charged” biochar for field- or container- grown ornamentals¹ to improve terrestrial biodiversity this could be a promising avenue for folks to do great environmental work while also being able to support themselves through that work.

1. without testing for and knowing the contaminants involved, including in the final product, food bearing plants are just not the way to go. It’s possible that concerning inputs could be filtered as above and then go through a further phytotemediation process, but the cost of testing would restrict access to this and even then I’m unsure I’d feel confident using it to grow something I’m going to eat. Still, some phytoremediation species like Helianthus make good feed stocks for biochar production so it may still be a decent way to close contaminant cycles.