The Someday Garden

During the 19th century, floriography, or the language of flowers, became a popular means of expressing emotions through the symbolic meanings assigned to plants and blossoms. The practice was especially fashionable in Victorian Britain, with its rigid social etiquette that severely limited open expressions of emotion, particularly in matters of courtship and romance. Flowers offered an additional, sometimes playful way to communicate sentiments that might otherwise be difficult or uncomfortable to articulate. A carefully selected bouquet could convey love, friendship, jealousy, and more, allowing the giver to communicate using a system of botanical symbolism.

Victorian floriography drew on older traditions from Ottoman Turkey, popularized in England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the early 18th century. By the 19th century, publishers were producing illustrated flower dictionaries that assigned meanings to individual plants, like Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers (1884). Individuals could exchange carefully arranged bouquets called “tussie-mussies” to convey coded messages ranging from passionate devotion to bitter rejection. A red rose signaled love, while a yellow carnation expressed disdain; striped carnations meant refusal, lavender suggested distrust, and marigolds conveyed grief. The way a bouquet was handed over mattered too: presented with the right hand, it carried an affirmative meaning; with the left, a negative one. Flowers worn in the hair signaled caution, while those pressed to the heart declared love. Entire conversations, confessions, and quarrels could unfold without a single spoken word, offering women in particular a rare avenue for agency within a repressive social framework.

In The Someday Garden, Sophie’s fascination with floriography provides her with a vocabulary for emotions she struggles to express directly. Early in the novel, she explains to Harrie that the Victorian language of flowers encompasses romantic affection alongside hostility and resentment, noting it could also be about “spiting your enemies” (43). Later, Sophie uses specific flowers to express her grief after Harrie’s death, associating different blossoms with different messages: “Roses for devotion, pink carnations and rosemary for remembrance, bluebells for kindness, zinnias for absent friends [and] aloe for grief. […] Butterfly weed to let one go” (50). Her knowledge of their symbolic meanings allows her to communicate feelings that ordinary language seems inadequate to convey.

Floriography also becomes an important element of Sophie’s developing relationship with Cyrus. During their time in the Someday Garden, the two discuss the meanings of various flowers, including honeysuckle, which Rus associates with “devoted love.” Through their exchanges, botanical knowledge is a form of courtship, as affection emerges through shared interests and symbolic language. Through these recurring floral associations, Poston adapts a historical practice of coded communication into a central feature of the novel’s exploration of love, grief, and emotional connection.