Many benthic organisms form very rough surfaces on the seafloor that can be described as submerged canopies. Recent evidence has shown that, compared with a unidirectional current, an oscillatory flow driven by surface waves can significantly enhance biological processes such as nutrient uptake. However, to date, the physical mechanisms responsible for this enhancement have not been established. This paper presents a theoretical model to estimate flow inside a submerged canopy driven by oscillatory flow. To reduce the complexity of natural canopies, an idealized canopy consisting of an array of vertical cylinders is used. The attenuation of the in-canopy oscillatory flow is shown to be governed by three dimensionless parameters defined on the basis of canopy geometry and flow parameters. The model predicts that an oscillatory flow will always generate a higher in-canopy flow when compared to a unidirectional current of the same magnitude, and specifically that the attenuation will monotonically increase as the wave orbital excursion length is increased. A series of laboratory experiments are conducted for a range of different unidirectional and oscillatory flow conditions, and the results confirm that oscillatory flow increases water motion inside a canopy. It is hypothesized that this higher in-canopy flow will enhance rates of mass transfer from the canopy elements, a problem formally investigated in a companion paper (Lowe et al., 2005b).