Hydrangea wreath

Oakleaf Hydrangea leaves

Ornamental Millet

DRYING FLOWERS

Anne K Moore

Whether your taste runs from bright orange to deep red to subtle beige or the many colors in between, fall is ready for preservation.� Drying leaves and flowers is as easy as plucking and plopping or as difficult as picking and pressing.� Pluck a flower head with some stem and plop it into a vase, with or without water; or cut off flowers that will lay flat, or almost flat, and press them for floral art.

Hydrangeas look great in floral arrangements, or just toss them into a basket. �When you pick hydrangeas for drying, choose fully open flower heads with stiff stems.� If the heads tend to flop over, they won�t dry satisfactorily.� The best way I have found to dry them is in a vase of water.� Cut a bouquet, put it in water, and set the flowers out of direct sun and drafts until they dry.� This is a good way to preserve the pink or blue color.� Most directions suggest drying flowers by hanging them in a cool place but I have found that a hot attic area dried my hydrangeas quickly and with few losses.

You can also allow the hydrangea blossoms to dry on the plant.� Most of them take on that beige hue, so popular in decorating.� Just make sure you cut them with short stems, leaving the buds of next year�s flowers on the bush.� Leave behind a few flowers on the bushes, too, for the birds.� Come winter, when food is scarce, little birds work the seeds out of the heads.� If you want to use the short-stemmed blossom heads in an arrangement, just attach floral picks or wire with florists tape to the short stems and arrange them as you wish.

Don�t pass up the chance to use ditch flowers.� Graceful grass seed heads, golden rod, even seedpods and cones from coneflowers look good in arrangements and are very easy to dry.� You can stand them in a vase or wrap the stems of loose bundles with a rubber band and hang them out of sunlight.�

You can experiment with small single flowers or leaves by pressing them between paper.� Add fern leaves to your drying collection.� They make wonderful wall art, glued to a background, covered with glass, and framed.� You need not buy expensive flower presses or blotting paper.� Just recycle those large telephone books and yellow pages.�

The paper pages in phone books are just the right consistency for pulling out moisture.� Lay the flowers as flat as you can in a single layer on a page in the middle or three quarters of the way back in the book.� If it isn�t a large book, just pile some more books on top to make a heavy press.� This can be stored anywhere in the house; there are no temperature requirements.� Then forget them.

In a few weeks, maybe sooner depending on the flower or leaf, you can carefully pick out your new art collection.� Using see-through craft glue for sticking, arrange the flowers in a bouquet on a backing paper you can frame.� If you are artistic, draw in stems.� If you are art inclined but untalented, use a print of a bouquet and add your dried material on top, making a collage.

Preserve fall flowers now for a pick-me-up during those short days coming all too soon.� When winter traps you indoors, you can still appreciate the natural world.� Creating something beautiful for your home is almost as much fun as planning next year�s garden.