The flower design started in Italy and grew through Europe. Paintings of impressive floral arrangements in vases were popular. In the paintings, fruit blossoms and leaves were woven into garlands to decorate walls and vaulted ceilings, and petals were piled into baskets or strewn on the floors, streets, or allowed to float down from balconies.
During this era, monks were known for having gardens with herbs and wildflowers. In the later part of the Gothic period flowers reached a more dominant role, such as flowers beginning to blossom in altar pictures, manuscripts, and paintings.

An important aspect of the monastery plan was to include a medicinal herb garden, which would “furnish the physician with the pharmaceutical products needed for his cures. A dependence on the power of herbs without reference to their Creator [God] was, however, regarded as improper for a Christian” [12]. Because God “causes herbs to grow,” their medical utility is fundamentally spiritual [13]. In addition, many plants were used by monks and Christians in general in sacred rituals and ceremonies. They often had associations appealing to spiritual bases as well as to medicinal effects.

Flowers were considered fashionable in this period. Large mass flowers were placed tightly into containers to create compact arrangements that were asymmetrical and stacked tightly. There was no definite style, but many different flowers and colours made the arrangement look almost unplanned. The tussie-mussie bouquets were still serving to eliminate odors. At the end of this period attempts were made to set up rules for a proper arranging of flowers, which is when it became an artful skill or profession in Europe. It was during this time period that a wide variety of arrangement styles began to develop. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, flower arrangements were commonplace and a wide variety of materials were used to make containers, including

ltulip-garden-flower

The designs in this period were formal and symmetrical and often tightly arranged with a variety of flowers. Oriental design became influential due to active trading. At the end of the period the designs became more informal due to the fact that the fragrance of the flowers, which were believed to rid the air of diseases, became more important. Small, handheld arrangements called nosegays or tussie-mussies were used to carry sweet scents, and also helped mask the odors of society where bathing was often believed to be unhealthy.Evidence of flowers dating back to the prehistoric period have been discovered through Flower Fossils. There are traces of association of flowers with humans during the paleolithic age.
Archaeologists uncovered skeletons of a man, two women and an infant buried together in soil containing pollen of flowers in a cave in Iraq. This association of flowers with the cave dwelling Neanderthals of the Pleistocene epoch is indicative of the role of flowers in burial rituals.
Analysis of the sediment pollen concentrated in batches, implied that possible bunches of flowers had been placed on the grave. Closer examination of the flower pollen enabled scientists to identify many flowers that were present, all of which had some therapeutic properties. The use of flowers also testify abundant floral varieties available at that time

Aroma of red tulip bulbs.

Flowering plants, called angiosperms, were believed to be already diverse and found in most locations by the middle of the Cretaceous Period ... 146 million years ago. A myriad of images of preserved flowers and flower parts have been found in fossils from Sweden, Portugal, England, and along the Eastern and Gulf coasts of the United States. Below are a few flowers which have a long history.During the Victorian era, in England the language of flowers was as important to people as being "well dressed." For example, the recognizable scent of a particular flower, plant or perhaps a scented handkerchief sent its own unique message. But scientists have yet to answer basic questions about these marvels of beauty... What led to their amazing diversity? Are there flowers that have not changed much during the evolution of this planet?