Quote 1

Bouquet of Sunflowers. 1881. Claude Monet. Wikimedia Commons

“I must have flowers, always, and always.”

Claude Monet

Flowers can be beautifully decorative, but do they have more meaning than merely being aesthetically pleasing, functioning as superficial adornments?  

Throughout history, flowers have been imbued with deep, emotional significance.They give a powerful, symbolic message on our behalf.

The artist Claude Monet’s life and work was very much dedicated to flowers. His garden was of supreme importance to him, and he spent much time creating and tending it.

The Artist’s  Garden at Giverny. Claude Monet. 1900. Wikimedia Commons

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

Monet

His love of flowers persisted throughout his life and he became obsessed with growing and painting them. For Monet, flowers were the centre of his universe; he especially loved those with petals that the light could shine through, and he loved to paint the effects of light on the beautiful plants that he grew.

Quote 2

Moïse Kisling – Bouquet of Flowers 1917.

“I am the lover’s gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.

Kahlil Gibran
“Song of the Flower XXIII”

Flowers have a multitude of symbolic meanings, and we have need of them at some of our most important life events. They are present at births, marriages and deaths and on many other social and cultural occasions. Why is this, and what do they mean to us?

Flowers can be tokens of love, meaningful gifts and symbols of friendship and respect. They mark an occasion, showing its significance and its importance. The beauty inherent in their shape, colour and scents can be emotionally and aesthetically stirring. As Gibran says, they can be “a part of joy and a part of sorrow,” present at our celebrations and comforting in our sadness. They provide a greater dimension to important occasions, filling the room with wonderful scents and adding a feeling of specialness to any occasion.

Flowers can also trigger memories and help us keep someone important in mind…

Quote 3

Conrad Felixmüller – The Flower Girl [1925]

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever”

Tennyson.

Flowers can have a profound influence on our emotions. They are a wonderful way of maintaining our connection with nature. They can also help us express and communicate our feelings; giving someone red roses on Valentine’s day, or a bunch of flowers beautifully arranged on a birthday, or perhaps a basket of delicate blooms on the birth of a baby, can all say so much about our feelings towards the other person.

Laying flowers on a grave is symbolic of our love and respect for the dead person, wanting to add some beauty and peace to mark the departure of a loved one. It is a gesture of remembrance, as we think about and celebrate the qualities of that person and their unique life. Of course this will also be a sad experience, but flowers can help us in some way to ‘say’ what we feel.

Often, lilies are seen having connections with death; they are also seen as peaceful and calming. Lilies are sometimes also seen as symbolising the regained innocence of a person’s soul after their death. In paintings of Ophelia, water-lilies are often depicted, symbolising the lost youthful life and her innocence, and also spiritual rebirth…

John Everett Millais – Ophelia.c 1851. Wikimedia Commons

“Water lilies are a transformative bloom. They embody the circle of life from birth to death. During its life cycle, the flower pulls itself down into the water to bear fruit. After the seeds develop, they float back to the surface. Bringing new life from water is a common theme in most religions (baptism, reincarnation, transcendence) and literature. The process illustrates life from an aqueous death.”

Verderamade

The old advertising slogan ‘say it with flowers,’ captured the essence of the flower’s ability to symbolically communicate for us, with different flowers ‘saying’ different things, according to their symbolic meaning to us.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema . In a Rose Garden, 1890.

“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”

Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

However, flowers may not always make us feel good. Sometimes, they become associated with pain and grief, and they may trigger memories of traumatic loss. Some people react against their strong scent, or suffer allergies.

They can, of course, symbolise different things for different people; the associations to flowers can be based on past experience, which may not always have been good. For example, people can try to manipulate each other by offering flowers, which may be unceremoniously dumped in a bin as a response. In a more constructive way, flowers can also be offered as a way of making up after an argument…

(Image:Pexels)

Sometimes, people might feel that flowers are offered in a mechanical, routine, perhaps performative way, as a kind of duty. I heard someone’s story about a family member, who was not popular amongst her relatives, offering flowers to her cousin in a ‘dutiful’ way, and the flowers died two days later!

There were several theories about this… that perhaps the flowers were cheap or old, or that they gave up on living, so malignant was the atmosphere around them! This story felt a little like the tale of Snow White and the poisoned apple, as if the flowers were offered as a kind of trick, a weapon, an ‘anti-gift.’

Funeral wreath. I.Sáček, Senior. 2013. Wikimedia Commons

“I’ve always found wreaths hideously sad, like decorative lifesavers thrown out too late.”

From : ‘The Kitchen God’s Wife’ by Amy Tan

The short lives of flowers can also put us in mind of our own mortality; as we enjoy them in full bloom and then have to watch them fade and die, we can feel sad and wistful. They can represent the cycle of life, and thus they are used at times when we celebrate birth or mourn a death, with all the important life occasions in between.

Gustave Caillebotte. Yellow Roses in a Vase 1882. Wikimedia Commons

“Everyone mourns the first blossom.
Who will grieve the rest who fall?”

Leigh Bardugo, King of Scar

 Svedomsky-Buried in Flowers. 1886. Wikimedia Commons

Quote 4

Moise Kisling – Vase of Flowers [1947]

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul.”

Luther Burbank

Having explored some of the negative connotations of flowers, it is important to underline that they can also be very healing to us all. They can help us relax, and cultivating flowers can help us spring into action… 

“Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own..”

Nancy Lavoie

In therapy, whenever clients told me that they had started to do some gardening, I felt that there was a symbolic message. They were planning, creating, producing growth. Often this unconsciously coincided with new emotional growth in the client.

Claude Monet. Water Lillies, 1915. Wikimedia Commons

“What keeps my heart awake is colourful silence”

Claude Monet

Monet’s flower and garden paintings themselves have brought a sense of quietude and peace to countless viewers over the centuries. The novelist Marcel Proust, who loved Monet’s work, felt that his paintings of nature could be very healing and could have a curative role-

“…analagous to that of psychotherapist with certain neurasthenics. More than a century later an Impressionist expert at Sotheby’s in London called Monet ‘the great anti-depressant.'”

Ross King. In : ‘Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies.’ p37

There is evidence to show the flowers can reduce stress and anxiety, improving our mood and wellbeing. They are also ecologically important, providing food and living quarters for many pollinating insects. Flowers are much used in Chinese medicine, herbal remedies, conventional medicine, aromatherapy, and in many other preparations and treatments. For example, chamomile is thought to be calming, lavender can aid sleep, snowdrops and daffodils provide treatment for Alzheimer’s (galantamine)and the foxglove gives us digoxin, which stimulates the heart.

Foxglove with a butterfly (cropped). Rachel Ruysch. (1664-1750) 1680’s. Wikimedia Commons

Flowers appeal to and stimulate many of our senses. We inhale their scents, see and appreciate their vibrant colours, feel their texture and their delicate smoothness and softness, hear them rustling and swaying in the breeze. As we have seen, they can trigger deep feelings in us, and can bring back memories.

We love their movement, and their ability to affect our mood, bringing us joy, as these lines from Wordsworth’s wonderful poem beautifully describe:

Spring Flowers. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. 1894. Public Domain.

“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

Wordsworth. The Daffodils. 1804. (Extract)

When Flowers Return (1911), Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Wikimedia Commons/RMN/R-G OJÉDA

© Linda Berman.