Three Roses Symbolism

I like the story “Three Roses” by Garth Nix, for the reason I feel that it has a great meaning to it. The gardener planting flowers in memory of what reminds him of his wife, to not forget what he loved about his wife was very touching to me. For the gardener to keep letting the king come back to take each flower, that was symbolic to the gardener, away back to his palace was strange. But, at the end of the story when the jardinière asked the gardener “why grow them only to have these memories taken from you?” the gardener explained to the jardinière by saying “I need nothing to remind me of my wife. When I walk alone under the night sky, I see the blackness of her hair. When the light catches the green glass of a bottle, I see her eyes. When
I say lost love for the reason that the gardener felt that he needed something to have as a symbol to remember his love for his wife. As I go back in the story and reread, I read that he basically plants a different rose in a color that reminds him of a certain thing about his wife and the time that he planted each of those flowers are different as well. For instance, the last flower that the king had taken from him was a red rose, that was planted three years after his wife’s death. The reason he chose to plant red was because it was a symbol of her lips that he loved. Now lost love comes into play because of the reason the gardener started planting the flowers and the reason he continued to plant the
The theme I think that the story is based on is lost love. The gardener believed at first that if he did not plant flowers that his love for his with would fade away. Until he realized that he did not need different color flowers to remember his love of his wife. He was able to remember her through other things around him. The second part of lost love was about the king; the king taking the different flowers and the flowers dying in different timespans was from the lack of love the flowers were replanted with. Each flower was giving the King time to show love to it as much as the gardener