Decoding the Secret Language of Flowers in Literature
Hi, my name is Siobhan and I am the co-owner of Lily's Florist which we established in 2009 after buying a flower shop in 2006. I have literally spoken to 1000's, no wait, 10's of 1000's of people wanting to send flowers for one reason or another, both in our old flower shop, and people calling us to order flowers, so I have a wee bit of experience on what I define as the language of flowers. You will notice that Bella originally wrote this article but I recently decided to chime in and give my take on the topic.
* A picture of our flower shop in Kingscliff in 2006
If you Google 'The language of flowers' you will most likely be bombarded with generic articles with clichés like 'symbolic meaning of flowers', you will read quotes from Shakespeare and Jane Austin and a whole bunch of other stuff that, IMO, just isn't that interesting.
My goal, with this blog post, is to humanise it, to make it real, to bring it to life, and give you real life examples from someone who has been there and done, in the trenches, and actually talking the talk now for almost 20 years.
> Learn more about how I am qualified to write about this topic
My Take on the Language of Flowers
You know what nobody tells you about running a flower shop? Half the job isn't arranging flowers, it's translating what people actually mean when they say things about flowers. And I'm not talking about the obvious and to be frank, boring stuff like red roses mean love (though honestly, after 17 years in this game, even that's not always true - more on that in a bit).
Back in 2007, when we first bought that daggy little shop on Marine Parade in Kingscliff - the one painted that awful lime green I've mentioned before in other posts - I thought flowers were flowers. Simple, right? Oh mate, was I wrong. Within the first month, I learned there's a whole secret language happening that nobody writes down anywhere, and if you don't speak it, you're stuffed.
The Great "Just Something Nice" Disaster of 2007
Picture this for a second, it's maybe our third week in the shop, I'm 7 months pregnant with Asha our eldest daughter, it's stinking hot (no air-con yet, as we couldn't afford it), and this bloke walks in. Middle-aged and Kingscliff local, looking proper stressed, the works. He goes, "I need something nice for the wife."
Now, coming from Sydney corporate world, "something nice" to me meant, well, something pleasant. Nothing too fancy, nothing too simple. So I showed him this lovely mixed bouquet we had, about $45, pretty standard. He looked at me like I'd suggested he give his wife a bag of potatoes. "No, no, something NICE," he says, emphasis on the nice.
As it turns out - and Anna, one of our first proper florist employees taught me this later, when a husband says "something nice" after being in the doghouse, it means the full catastrophe. We're talking minimum $80, preferably with roses, definitely with guilt written all over it. That day I learned that "nice" has about fifteen different meanings in flower language, and you better know which one they mean or you've lost the sale (and possibly helped end a marriage).
When "Whatever's Cheapest" Doesn't Mean That At All
This one still makes me laugh. Remember, this is 2008, we're still getting forty-plus calls a day thanks to that bloody Yellow Pages ad the previous owner bought. A lady calls up, wants flowers delivered to her mum in Murwillumbah for her birthday. "Just whatever's cheapest," she says.
Being literal minded and still learning, I suggested our $35 posy. Dead silence on the phone, which was a little off-putting I have to say. Then: "Well, I don't want her to think I don't care..."
That's when it clicked - "whatever's cheapest" actually means "I have a budget but I don't want to say it out loud because that feels tacky but please don't make me look cheap to my mum." After that call, I started saying things like "our bouquets start at $35, a little trick of the trade by the way, but most people for birthdays go with our $55 seasonal selection", I watched our average sale jump overnight just from learning to decode what people really meant.
The "Bright and Cheerful" Trauma
I reckon it was around about the mid- 2008, still finding our feet, the shop's doing okay (some days we'd make $25, other days a few hundred - feast or famine as they say). Regular customer comes in, one of those lovely older ladies from Salt village, you know, where Peppers and Mantra are. She needs flowers for a friend who'd just lost her husband. "Something bright and cheerful," she says, "to lift her spirits."
Now, if you know anything about grief (which I didn't then, not really), you know the last thing someone wants when they've just lost their life partner is aggressively cheerful sunflowers screaming "CHEER UP!" at them from across the room. But how do you tell a customer that without sounding like you're telling them they're wrong?
That was probably the first time I properly understood that flowers carry weight way beyond their petals. When someone says "bright and cheerful" for grief, what they're really saying is "I don't know how to fix this enormous sadness so I'm trying to add some light." The flower choice isn't really about the flowers at all - it's about feeling helpless in the face of loss.
We ended up doing soft yellows and whites with a touch of pink - hopeful but not demanding happiness. The customer came back a week later to say her friend had cried (in a good way) and said they were perfect.
The Romantic Roses Rebellion of Valentine's 2009
Right, so Valentine's Day 2009. We're prepared (we think). Ordered in masses of red roses because that's what Valentine's is about, yeah? Love, romance, red roses, sorted. Except we're in Kingscliff, not Sydney, and beach towns play by different rules.
This tradie comes in, probably 25, covered in plaster dust, and he looks at all our red roses like they've personally offended him. "Haven't you got anything more... original?" he asks. Turns out his girlfriend had explicitly told him "don't you dare get me boring red roses like every other bloke."
That year we had three separate couples where the red roses actually caused arguments. One poor bloke came back the next day asking if we did refunds because his girlfriend accused him of "not putting any thought into it." (We didn't do refunds, but we did help him out with a more personalised arrangement - natives and bright tropical stuff that actually meant something to them as a couple who loved beach walks.)
That's when I learned that speaking flower language isn't just about knowing what flowers traditionally mean - it's about understanding that every person and every relationship has their own dictionary, and sometimes a bird of paradise says "I love you" better than a dozen roses ever could.
The "No Wacky Flowers" Incident That Taught Me Everything
This one's tricky to tell but important. Early 2009, this older lady comes in, very proper, very particular. She's organising flowers for her daughter's wedding. She looks at our arrangements and goes, "None of those wacky flowers though."
I'm standing there, pregnant with Ivy by then, absolutely gobsmacked. Don't even know what to say. She meant carnations - she was talking about carnations. In her generation, in her world, carnations were somehow "less than" because they were what the European migrants grew and sold cheaper than roses.
But here's the thing about carnations - they last forever, they smell beautiful, and they mean "I'll never forget you" in the old flower language books. They're working class flowers, tough as nails, unpretentious. Kind of like us, actually, trying to make a go of this flower shop with no experience and a baby on the way.
We did her wedding flowers without carnations (customer's always right and all that), but that moment taught me how much cultural baggage we attach to simple things like flowers. How language carries history, prejudices, hopes, and fears all tangled up together. And how sometimes the most beautiful things get dismissed because of where they came from or who loved them first.
What Flowers Really Say (After 26,000+ Phone Calls Taught Me)
After 3 years of phone calls during out time in the shop, then 10 of 1000's after that when we went fully online with flowers, walk-ins, and weddings, here's what I actually learned about flowers and language, in my opinion:
When someone says "just a small bunch," they're usually testing to see if you'll judge them for not spending more. When they say "something that'll last," they're really saying this relationship/gesture needs to count because they won't be back soon. When they ask "what do you recommend?" while looking at specific flowers, they've already decided but need permission to spend the money.
"Do you deliver to the hospital?" means someone's scared. "What goes well with roses?" means they're trying to make standard special. "I need something that says sorry" means they've properly stuffed up and they know it. And "it's for a funeral but I don't want funeral flowers" means they're grieving someone who lived bright and want to honour that.
Do you know what the most profound thing is? In the three years in the flower shop and later years when we went fully online, through all those translations and mistranslations, I learned that we rarely say what we mean directly, I guess that is human nature right. We tend to dance around it with flowers as props, hoping someone else will understand the words we can't quite say ourselves. Every flower bouquet that left our shop was carrying a message way heavier than its petals - guilt, love, sorrow, hope, apology, celebration, sometimes all at once.
My Final Thoughts
That little shop in Kingscliff, with its dodgy air conditioning (when we finally got it) and that phone that never stopped ringing, it wasn't really a flower shop at all. It was a translation service for human emotions, and we were just barely keeping up with our phrase book, one stuffed-up order at a time.
These days, running Lily's Florist from everywhere and nowhere (we're online now, have been since 2009), I still think about those early lessons. Every order that comes through, whether it's for Kingscliff or Cairns or bloody Timbuktu, carries that same weight of unspoken meaning. We just got better at reading between the petals, so to speak!