The healing power of flowers: they don't just make you happier--they can make you healthier. Michele Owens looks into the budding research on floral therapy. Take two asters and call us in the morning ....

I DON'T JUST LOVE FLOWERS, I NEED THEM. I garden like mad and fill my yard to overflowing with them. And every morning between the arrival of the first crocuses in April until the end of the sweet autumn clematis blooms in October, I set my alarm a little early so I can take a tour of my garden, cup of coffee in hand, before my children wake up.

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What I get in those five or ten minutes of wandering the garden is at once complicated and primal: thrills and chills from the explosions of flower color, shape, texture, and scent. Object lessons in hope and renewal--I know that the lumpy, unpleasant-smelling bulb I stick in the ground in October is going to yield the absurd glory of the imperial fritillaria in May. At the same time, I come away with such a profound sense of peace that it allows me to move hopefully through even the most frantic day, to manage the gritty juggling act that is motherhood-plus-paid-employment with the sense that it is all adding up to something transcendent.

I often wonder why I get such mental and moral uplift from a bunch of silly tulips and lilies. It's a peculiarly disproportionate reaction, but clearly I'm not alone in it: The power of flowers is woven throughout our culture. It's common wisdom that if you want a good life, you have to stop and smell the roses. We use flowers to say all kinds of significant things to each other, from "I love you" to "Get well soon." And people have long understood that flowers actually do help you get well soon.

As far back as ancient Egypt, physicians would order walks in gardens for their patients with psychological problems. By now horticultural therapy is a well-established tool of rehabilitation for patients with physical as well as mental difficulties, and medical institutions of all kinds have built gardens specifically designed to be therapeutic, from "wander gardens" for people suffering from dementia to gardens for the blind that focus on texture and scent.

The therapy itself includes almost any contact with plants, …