They don't just make you happier... they make you healthier.

Horticultural therapy is both an emerging field and a time-proven practice with wide-ranging therapeutic benefits - fostering stress reduction, social growth and physical rehabilitation in people with a wide range of mental and physical difficulties.  Like many alternative treatments, there is no scientific basis for the benefits of horticultural therapy.  Yet we know intuitively that it works.  On a less clinical level, flowers themselves improve our mood and nurture our well-being, as they provide abundant sensory stimulation and bring brightness and beauty to our lives.

Jeannette Haviland-Jones, director of the Human Emotions lab at Rutgers University and one of few psychologists to study the "flower effect," conducted an experiment investigating the flower-emotion connection.  She learned that when presented with a flower bouquet, 100% of women would react with what scientists term a "Duchenne smile": a genuine smile that works all parts of the face and indicates measurable changes in the brain.  In other words, it shows real happiness.  There was no such unanimity among women presented with other gifts.  (And, unfortunately, no such research conducted on male subjects... but based on subjective observations, has similar effects.  Interestingly, the only other such 100% response can be created when a snake is suddenly dropped on an unsuspecting subject.  This universally evokes fear, even among those who like snakes.) 

Why do flowers do this to us?

There are several theories, such as "learned association" (we've learned to like flowers because of their link to happy occasions and beloved figures), or that humans evolved to like flowers because of their association with food: they are a sign of fruit to come, they trigger our survival mechanism. However, do apples evoke the happiness response?  Broccoli?  Rutabaga?  

From an evolutionary perspective, one might argue that flowers have been bred like pets to lighten and brighten our mood.  And there are evolutionary benefits to happiness: it makes us healthier, more attractive to others, more likely to reproduce.  We, in turn, have been conditioned by the flowers to do their reproductive bidding: we propagate and nurture them as no bee or hummingbird is able.  Flowers tempt us with their showy forms, heavenly colors and intoxicating fragrances -- the latter being particularly powerful in their mood-enhancing ability.  Haviland-Jones has found that even if you expose people to a flower's scent below the level of conscious awareness, it will elicit a positive emotional response.  Perhaps flowers are quietly dosing us in ways that alter our consciousness, and are speaking to us in our own chemical language.

Flowers are object lessons in hope and renewal.  The lumpy, unpleasant-smelling bulb that we stick in the ground in October is going to yield the absurd glory of the imperial fritillaria in May.  This act of forward-thinking optimism gives us the sense as we move through our hectic lives that it is all adding up to something wondrous yet simple, something transcendent.  

Maybe flowers remind us, also, of our connection to the earth, our place in the world.  Maybe they are valuable for their own sake, by reminding us of beauty, of romance, of joy, of sex, of loved ones, friends, and neighbors.  Perhaps they remind us too of our own equally ephemeral nature. 

Life is short.  Stop and smell the roses.

Sources:   Owens, Michele, The Healing Power of Flowers.  O, November 2006, Vol. 7, Iss. 11.

    Stewart, Amy.  Flower Confidential. New York:  Workman, 2007.