Floriography

For The Hellebore Society (which comes out January 10th!), I spent a lot of time researching and thinking about the Victorian language of flowers. For those of you who don’t know, the language of flowers, or floriography, was a practice done in the late 1800s/early 1900s where people would send messages to each other in the form of bouquets. Different flowers/foliage meant different things. So, arborvitae meant “everlasting love'“, azalea meant “be careful”, and yellow acacia meant “secret love.” Sent together, that might communicate, “I love you forever but we have to be careful and keep it secret.”

We still retain some of these meanings - red roses symbolize true love, while yellow roses are for friendship. Even if you didn’t know that, you probably kind of knew that red roses are more romantic than yellow. Some flower meanings have developed since then, such as the red poppy representing those soldiers who have died, which was popularized by the poem In Flanders Fields.

I’m not sure why floriography became so interesting to me, nor why it became such a part of my book. By the time I get to the end of the writing process, I’ve picked up and put down so many ideas that I don’t always remember how I got to where I am. But what I do know is that there is something so appealing to me about the meanings we humans give to the smallest of things.

I’m a gardener, which means that I spend a fair amount of my winter months thinking of what I’m going to plant. And although I’ve always leaned toward vegetables, flowers have a way of weaving themselves into any garden. Whether that’s as natural pest control (nasturtiums and marigolds) or as attractions for pollinators (bee balm and clover) or even as herbs that happen to flower (sage and lavender), flowers are always around. And in the Pacific Northwest, with our mild winters, the stubbornest of flowers stick around long past when you’d expect them to disappear.

So, I began to get used to them. And to learn which ones worked here and which ones didn’t. And which ones worked too well and started taking over everything. (I’m looking at you, California poppies). So I suppose it was no surprise that when I started writing my next book, I had flowers on the mind. And now, when I plan my garden for next spring, I’m not just ordering yarrow, gladiolus and bluebells. I’m also thinking about “healing”, “strength of character”, and “loyalty”…and smiling about how humanity always makes even the most mundane of things that much more interesting.