Dreaming about
flowers

We give flowers at almost every turning point of a life, at births and first dates, at weddings, in hospital rooms and at funerals. So dreaming about flowers can mean something tender, something hopeful or something sad, and the same bunch of tulips can carry any of them. Most often a flower dream is about something in your life that is growing or being noticed, and sometimes about something beautiful you're afraid of losing.

The state of the flowers and who they were for are what tell those apart. A bouquet arriving at your door is a different dream from a vase of dead stems you forgot to throw away. A field you walked through alone isn't the flowers on a grave either, even when the colors match. Your own week (a new love, a loss, a project starting to work) matters as much as the petals.

What dreaming about flowers means

A flower is the part of a plant that's there to be seen, it lasts days rather than years, and it only exists because something went right in the soil first. Those facts give most of the readings, with another for the way people use flowers to speak.

Something in you is opening

English calls someone who finds their feet late a "late bloomer" and says a person "blossoms" when they come into their own. A dream of flowers opening, or growing where you didn't plant them, often comes when you're letting a side of yourself show, a talent or a confidence or a softness you'd kept closed. If the flowers were in your own home or garden, the change is likely close to you.

Being noticed and appreciated

Flowers are how people say "I see you" without having to find the words. If you were given flowers in the dream, or someone admired yours, it may be about wanting recognition, or about finally getting it. And if you were the one handing them out, think about who in your life you'd like to thank or win over.

Beauty that won't last

Cut flowers start dying the day they're picked, which is part of why they're precious. A flower dream with a sad edge is often about something lovely and short-lived, like a holiday romance, the last months before a child leaves home or the good spell before a hard change at work. You may be trying to enjoy it while it lasts.

Saying what you can't say out loud

The Victorians built a whole language of flowers, where a yellow rose or a sprig of rosemary carried a coded message to whoever received it. Dreams use flowers the same way. Does a particular flower mean something to you, because it grew at a grandparent's house or was in your wedding bouquet? That private meaning beats any list.

Dreaming about white flowers

White flowers carry opposite meanings depending on where you grew up. In much of Europe and North America they're the flowers of weddings and christenings, while in Japan, China and Korea white chrysanthemums are the flowers of funerals (in France, chrysanthemums are the flower for graves in November). So a dream of white flowers often sits at a threshold, an ending or a new beginning, and your own culture decides which comes to mind first. If you're grieving, they may be part of saying goodbye. If you've just made a big commitment, they may be about starting clean.

Dreaming about being given flowers

Being handed flowers is about being valued, and the giver tells you by whom. Flowers from a partner are affection, while flowers from someone you've fallen out with can be the apology you're still waiting for. But flowers with no card, or from a stranger, often point to admiration you'd like and can't place. If you felt awkward taking them, ask whether you find it hard to accept kindness right now.

Dreaming about dead flowers

Wilted or dead flowers are the clearest sad version of the dream. They usually point to something that has run its course, like a relationship that has gone quiet, a friendship nobody tends any more or an enthusiasm you've lost. It isn't a prediction, but it often comes after you've already noticed, and it's asking whether the thing needs care or needs clearing away. Dead flowers left in a vase for weeks can also be about holding on to something past its time.

Dreaming about picking flowers

Picking flowers is choosing, and it's also taking. A dream of gathering a bunch for yourself is about collecting good things, or wanting to. But picking someone else's flowers, or pulling up a whole plant, can carry guilt, the sense you've taken something that wasn't yours to take. Who were the flowers for when you'd picked them?

Dreaming about a field of flowers

A meadow full of flowers is one of the happiest dreams people report, wide open and full of color. It usually comes during a good stretch, or a longing for one, and it often feels like freedom. If you were lost in the field, or couldn't find the edge of it, the dream may be about having more choices or more good things than you know what to do with. A garden is different, a tended place with someone in charge, and has its own page on gardens.

Dreaming about planting flowers

Planting is hope you can hold in your hand, since you put a bulb in the ground in autumn and wait months to see anything. A dream of planting flowers is often about patience, a project or a relationship you're starting now and won't see bloom for a while. If you're also thinking about trees, that's the slower and longer version of the same hope.

Dreaming about flowers according to Jung and Freud

Flowers are an old image in psychology as well as scripture, and each man gives the dream a different question.

Jung on the cup-shaped flower

When Jung catalogued the images that carry the mother archetype, vessel-shaped flowers like the rose made the list, next to the garden, the plowed field and the spring.^[1] Read through that idea, a dream of a cup-shaped flower opening can be about receiving, about being held, or about your relationship with your mother or with care in general. The rose has its own page for that reason.

Freud on the bouquet with no card

For Freud a dream was a wish in disguise, and your own associations came before any list.^[4] A bouquet that arrives with no card is a tidy example, the wish to be noticed with the sender's name left off, so you never have to say who you hoped it was. He also looked at the day before, and a wedding, a hospital visit or a florist's window can supply the flowers while your mood supplies the rest.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of flowers in dreams

Flowers in the Bible

The Bible uses flowers for trust and for time. Jesus tells his listeners to consider the lilies of the field, which neither work nor spin and are still dressed better than Solomon.^[2] And Isaiah says the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God stands for ever.^[3] If your flower dream felt spiritual, it may be about being cared for without having to earn it, or about something short-lived next to something lasting.

Flowers in the Agni Purana

In the Agni Purana, a Sanskrit teaching text with a chapter of dream omens, seeing red flowers is among the bad dreams, while white garlands, and white flowers on trees in the sky, are among the good ones.^[5] Colors split differently there than at weddings and funerals, where white can go either way.

Questions to ask about your flower dream

Flower dreams make most sense once you remember exactly which flowers they were and what you were doing with them.

• What kind of flowers were they, and do they mean anything to you?
• Were they fresh, opening, wilting or dead?
• Were they given, picked, planted or found?
• Who were they for, and who were they from?
• What in your life right now is growing, or ending?

Oniri asks about the color, the giver and your week before it reads the dream, so a bouquet from your partner and a wreath at a funeral never get the same reading.