I, too, am a fan of flowers (which may be strange to you because I'm male, but one of my favorite people was a master floral gardener and he was male (he's passed on, now), so no jokes or snide comments, please!) Anyway, I am very partial to roses. One of the best ways I've used to get my roses to flourish is to place ashes at their base. Roses thrive in alkaline (acidic) soil, and when water seeps through the ashes, it lowers the pH of the soil. The roses love it, although you want to make sure you don't have plants near them that do not care for acidic soil.
I always said that when I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes placed around the base of a rose arbor, so that I may live anew through their beauty and bring joy to the hearts of others. No nobler duty can I think of than this.
Esotericists (Eliphas Levi, Dion Fortune) have said that the two things that have reached the pinnacle of their evolutionary cycle are the rose and the diamond, since both have achieved mastery in diversity of form. Maybe that's we value both so much.
