Victorians Used Flowers to Send Secret Messages Victorians elevated floriography to an art form and created bouquets to say things that could not be said aloud in polite society. Author: Courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks Archives Victorians elevated floriography to an art form and created bouquets to say things that could not be said aloud in polite society. When people get a bouquet of flowers today, the first thing they generally reach for is a vase to put them in. In Victorian times, people reached for their floral dictionary to decipher what secret message the flowers were saying. From the simpl...