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“Lavender boy” was also a term used for gay men in the 1920s, and lesbian feminist Rita Mae Brown and other activists disrupted a women’s event wearing T-shirts that read “Lavender Menace,” in 1970.

Because roses are a symbol of mourning, and transgender people are murdered at disproportionate rates, the phrase “give us our roses while we are still here” has been adopted by the trans community to celebrate the beauty of life through flowers.

Lavender roses in particular are often sent on Valentine’s Day and used for gay weddings. (See it recreated by our in-house Fleuriste June Jung in Downtown Vancouver, in larger-than-life floral 'Love Hands'). Most of the Royal Parks have two displays each year - in spring and summer - with the colour and greenery in the flower beds being designed a year in advance.

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Vancouver’s first official pride parade was in 1981, in Nelson Park, a tradition that still takes place today.

Vancouver’s pride community really took hold in the 1970s and 80s, when there were 12 gay bars in the West End alone.

Towards the end of the 19th century, writers and poets came to celebrate Sappho as a predecessor of lesbian artists, with the violet as a lesbian symbol. 

In the early part of the 20th century, lesbians in Paris who studied and celebrated the works of Sappho wore violets on their clothes.

Deni Todorovic floral mannequin created by Paper Daisy Studio, Sydney 2023

Deni Todorovic floral mannequin created by Paper Daisy Studio, Sydney 2023

In the late 1970s, a rainbow flag created by artist Gilbert Baker made its debut at the San Francisco event to symbolize Gay Pride and has since become an iconic symbol.

Protestors carried flowers in New York to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in what is considered the very first Pride parade in 1970. Giving someone a bouquet of flowers could convey all sorts of meanings depending on the specific flowers chosen, from love and devotion to remembrance and forgiveness. Playwright Tennessee Williams worked violets into his play Suddenly Last Summer through the character Mrs.

Violet Venable.

daisy gay

And the world-famous Little Sister’s Book Store and Art Emporium still exists today, now on Davie Street, after surviving several attempted bombings and challenging Canada Customs in the Supreme Court for its right to import so-called “obscene materials” from the U.S. So many milestones achieved, and so many yet to come.

Fleurs de Villes has celebrated Pride across the world: from San Francisco, to Sydney, Australia for World Pride, and of course in our home town of Vancouver, Canada.

Some even had negative connotations – yellow carnations, for example, represented rejection and disappointment.

Across the Royal Parks you'll find many different flower colours, with our talented team growing half a million plants each year in the Hyde Park super nursery.

Love Hands by June Jung, Vancouver 2022

Love Hands by June Jung, Vancouver 2022

Sylvester floral mannequin created by Bellevue Floral Co., San Francisco 2023

Sylvester floral mannequin created by Bellevue Floral Co., San Francisco 2023

Deni Todorovic floral mannequin created by Paper Daisy Studio, Sydney 2023

BACK TO JOURNAL

We value plants for a number of reasons; their scientific intrigue, artistic inspiration and sheer beauty.

But plants are also rich in symbolism.

Flowers have come to represent everything from the language of love to subtle political statements.

So, it’s no surprise that they have become icons of the queer community – linked to gay and lesbian love, as well as celebrating transgender identity.

As part of Kew’s Queer Nature festival, discover some of the floral iconography that has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ community.

Violets

Possibly one of the oldest queer symbols, violets have been linked to lesbian love for over two and a half thousand years – as long as the very origins of the word.

The poet Sappho lived on the Greek island of Lesbos in the 6th century BCE and is celebrated as one of the greatest lyric poets of her time.

Famously, Oscar Wilde asked his fellow gay friends to wear a green carnation in their lapels in proud solidarity at the premiere of his play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, in 1892.

Discover more

Flower power and LGBT+ history

Throughout time, it’s easy to trace how flowers have taken on symbolic meaning for different cultures, religions and social groups.

The ancient Greeks associated roses with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, while the ancient Egyptians believed that the lotus represented rebirth and creation. 

The Victorians were particularly prolific with the meanings they assigned to flowers, developing an entire language – ‘floriography’ – which they used to communicate with each other.

The language of flowers, or floriography, was the Victorian trend of applying meanings to certain flowers to reflect specific emotions or sentiments, allowing subtle messages to be communicated through carefully-curated bouquets.

From Ancient Greece to the roaring twenties in New York to modern day Vancouver, flowers have been important to the LGBTQ2+ communities, with special meanings and symbolism.

Even Hollywood saw a brief swell in casting of flamboyantly, if not openly, gay actors, such as drag artist Jean Malin.

As the 1930s and prohibition ended, police cracked down on queer friendly clubs, and the Hays Code brought an end to any overtly gay characters being portrayed on screen.

While pansy was once used as a pejorative, it is slowly being reclaimed by some in the gay community as a term of endearment.

Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at sites where homophobic and transphobic violence has occurred in London and across the world in an art piece called The Pansy Project.

Lavender

Violets are not the only purple flower linked to the queer community. 

Into the 1930s and 40s, lavender became increasingly associated with gay men and lesbian women. 

After the communist Red Scare in the 1940s and 50s, the USA went through a similar but lesser-known period of history called the Lavender Scare, where homosexual people throughout American society were ousted from government jobs due to their perceived communist sympathies.

As a result, the colour lavender became a symbol of empowerment within the LGBTQ+ community.

In 1969, the president of the National Organization for Women claimed lesbian membership of the group was a ’Lavender Menace‘, and would threaten the progress of the feminist movement.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, subsequent to the Stonewall Riots and the advent of gay liberation, pink slowly rose to become the defacto colour for gay pride.

Red represents life, orange is for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony and purple for spirit. First cultivated in the 19th century, the pansy became the symbol for humanist and freethought movements, due to the name coming from the French word for thought, pensée.

But the pansy was also notably used throughout the 20th century as a somewhat derogatory term for homosexual men.

Along with buttercup, daisy, and other flowery language (including the somewhat nonspecific ‘horticultural lad’), pansy was a term used to refer to gay men, suggesting them to be non-masculine and delicate.

But during the 1920’s and 30’s, the flower lent its name to the Pansy Craze, a brief golden age for drag clubs and gay friendly bars predominantly in the USA.

With prohibition in full swing, the underground club scene in New York became a hot spot for LGBTQ+ nightlife.