
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.