Fill It With Flowers

"Wild roses . . . my dream is a world filled with wild roses. When the battle is over, I want to fill the world with flowers."

—Firion, Dissidia Final Fantasy

Here's a place, often a whole world, that is somewhat on the bleak side. This is no Arcadia, and may even be a Death World.

Depressed by this landscape, a female character (and it is Always Female^[1]) decides to rectify the situation. She wants to plant flowers throughout the land, to transform it into an Eden of multicoloured blooms.

For whatever reason, it's very rare for the woman to do what she sets out to do. If she eventually gets her wish, it will usually be at the hand of a male counterpart, probably a love interest, perhaps as a result of her Passing the Torch upon her death. In this case, the resultant field of flowers is a tribute to her memory, like a gravestone the size of a landscape.

There is a Spear Counterpart. A man is more likely to want to plant trees than flowers, which are a more masculine symbol, but he will not generally need the opposite sex's help. Trees or flowers, man's dream or woman's, it is a man's work that will get it done in the end: an unfortunate Double Standard.

Either way, the greenery is a visual symbol that the world has been saved and brought to more pleasant state. This may be used to send a message about nature.

Related to Hope Sprouts Eternal. See also Flower Motifs.

Examples of Fill It With Flowers include:

Anime and Manga

• In the expanded movie of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, after the Time Skip and apparent defeat of the Evil Overlord, Nia confesses that she hopes to help the reconstruction of the world by filling it with flowers. Simon agrees and offers to help, but she refuses, saying that he has work of his own to do. In the Distant Finale, long after Nia's death, we see Simon Walking the Earth, fulfilling her dream. He digs a well for an impoverished village, and says that they can repay him by filling their land with flowers.
• The Trigun episode "Little Arcadia is about a couple whose dream is to nourish a lush forest that miraculously grows on their nigh-uninhabitable planet.

Film

• A male example: in A Troll in Central Park, Stanley wants to fill all of New York City with flowers. He succeeds in the end.
• A somewhat strange example: in The movie Joe's Apartment, Lily is working to make a garden in a depressed neighborhood to make it a better place. The villains of the story make sure that the garden is destroyed. Joe likes Lily and wishes her to be happy and with the help of his cockroach friends and all of the rats, pigeons, etc. that the roaches can muster, Lily's garden is rebuilt.
• Subverted example in The Proposition, where Stanley's struggle to maintain a proper English rose garden (complete with picket fence) in the dry Australian outback is a metaphor for his hopeless ambition to "tame" the country he's living in.

Literature

• In the Mistborn trilogy, Kelsier's Dead to Begin With wife Mare had had this intention in the face of a history of a thousand years in a Crapsack World. She had a picture of a flower (no one alive had ever seen one) that she carried to her death and bequeathed to Kelsier. The picture later passes on to Vin, who gives it to Sazed when he's facing a religious crisis. And in the end, Sazed becomes a God, and uses the picture, among other information, to recreate the world as it once was. The surviving characters awaken to find themselves in a field of flowers.
• Done somewhat unintentionally in the Belgariad. Garion's cousin Adara asks him to make a bush bloom to prove his magic. He refuses because doing so would kill the bush, but takes a twig and creates a flower just for her. The two go back home, leaving the flower forgotten. And many years later, they find it has spread throughout the area, and moreover, has powerful curative properties.
• The Man Who Planted Trees is a male equivalent on the idea. See the other wiki for details.

Video Games

• Fiona in Chrono Trigger. In her case, she tends a forest that is turning into a desert, hoping to use a mystical seedling that has been passed down throughout her family for generations, but is impeded first by the absence of her husband Marco, then by the presence of monsters in the region, and finally by the sheer toil required to make it work. The party leaves their Robot Buddy behind, and comes back for him in 400 years, heavily worn out but with a huge and healthy forest to show for it.
• In the first Lufia game, the party visits a city that is heavily industrialised but has patches of flowers throughout it. In the second game, a prequel, the player finds out why: 100 years prior, a factory was producing pollution that was killing all nearby flowers. After the local Innocent Flower Girl complained of this to the scientist who owned the factory, he promised to reverse the situation.
• In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, Razzy wants to turn Wystern (A floating metal tower Venice analog with an economy based on selling weapon) into a city of flowers if she wins the tournament and becomes one of the city's Craftlords. Due to Pratty defeating her early on, she promises to implement Razzy's dream if she wins, resulting in an explicit and blatant crush.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy Firion has the dream to fill the world with wild roses. The wild rose itself is both a metaphor for people living freely from oppression of tyrants like his Arch Enemy The Emperor as well as a throwback to the watchword of the Rebel Army in Final Fantasy II. Wishy washy hero of Final Fantasy VII Cloud Strife who cannot find a reason to continue fighting finds strength in Firion's dream and it helps spurn him and later Terra to keep fighting.
• Most of Okami is about Amaterasu's quest to sweep the blight from Nippon and restore the flowers and growing plants. Even enemies turn into flowers when she's defeated them.

Real Life

• Johnny Appleseed.
• During her time as First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson made national beautification a priority. Her efforts resulted in such measures as the Highway Beautification Act, which limited the use of billboards along highways to encourage the growth of wildflowers.

1. ↑ except when its not.