The Japan Times ran a story on Common Flowers on Saturday, July 31st 2010. Here are some excerpts.

Shiho Fukuhara of BCL explains, Suntory Flowers and the Moondust carnation represent the first commercially available genetically engineered consumer product that is intended purely for aesthetic consumption: ‘‘The media outcry wasn’t that huge since it was neither food nor developed from animals.’’
Fukuhara found it strange how relaxed the Japanese are about genetic engineering, the business behind it and the lack of a public dialogue about the topic.
‘‘Creating genetically manipulated plants for merely aesthetic purposes is a nice marketing strategy from somebody who wants to introduce the genetic engineering industry without being regarded as irresponsible,’’ Fukuhara says. ‘‘A product like flowers can slowly change our perception of genetically altered products. If it’s nice and beautiful with ‘Dream come true’ as a tag line, who cares how it’s made?’’
…
BCL’s process of cloning Suntory’s blue flower doesn’t sound that difficult. They buy the modified flowers and then bring them back to life using plant tissue culture techniques, a way of propagating plants in sterile conditions.
‘‘Basically, once a flower is cut, it is slowly dying. With plant tissue culture, plants are grown on a growth medium with the necessary nutrition. If the flower is reasonably fresh it will start growing again. This is what we mean by ‘reverse-engineering’ the plant,’’ says Fukuhara.

Online version of the full article, it’s also available as PDF