Craft Videos

How to Dry Flowers

As we head into mid-summer, many perennial plants reach their peak, with flowers perfect for gathering and drying. Here’s a few tips on how to dry fresh flowers effectively, preserving as much of the attractive natural color and texture of the petals as possible.

Air-Drying Flowers is one of the simplest ways to preserve flowers from your garden. This article discusses the various techniques of air-drying, including hanging the flowers upside down, drying them flat, or drying with the stems held upright in vases. See this List of Flowers Suitable for Air Drying for a comprehensive alphabetical list of flowers that can be successfully air dried.

Our new article on How to Dry Roses in Silica Gel explains how to use silica gel to dry flowers such as roses, asters, carnations, marigolds, dahlias, larkspur, geranium, zinnia, chrysanthemum and delphinium. Silica gel hastens the drying process and is particularly good for preserving pastel colors such as yellow or pink.

I also enjoyed this University of Illinois video, which shows how simple it is to use silica gel for both simple flowers, such brown-eyed susan, or more complex flowers, such as many-petalled zinnias.

If you are wanting to make crafts such as this Hydrangea Wreath, check out How to Dry Hydrangeas for some useful advice. I have a beautiful hydrangea that produces huge white flower heads every August, and I find the easiest method is the one explained in this article: basically, leaving the flower heads on the plant to reach their peak and begin to dry out on their own. Some of the tallest stalks always fall over in the wind unless I stake them, so those I bring indoors and dry in vases.

There are many books devoted entirely to Flower Drying with a Microwave: Techniques and Projects. If you are interested in this time-saving method, there are sure to be suitable books in your local library. Microwave ovens differ widely in power range, so it’s difficult to provide specific instructions but, if you want to try it, follow manufacturer’s instructions for microwave use, set the oven to low power, and begin drying in increments of a few seconds at a time. Quite some time ago, I experimented with Drying Flowers in the Microwave using Kitty Litter and I did have some good results, but silica gel will likely be more consistent.

If you’ve grown a good crop of herbs and would like to keep using them well into fall and winter, then check out Drying and Preserving Herbs for some good basic advice.

My lavender plants are just about finished blooming, but if you are still enjoying lavender blossoms in your garden, consider making a Lavender Wand or Lavender Bottle, or maybe a Lavender Fan, with some of the tallest stems.

Finally, don’t forget about the time-honored method of drying flowers by pressing them. Although many flowers will dry out amazingly well when pressed between the pages of a large telephone book, it’s also pretty easy to Make a Flower Press like the one shown here.

For more information on drying flowers, including a list of flowers suitable for pressing, and drying times for various flowers using silica gel, check out the University of Missouri Extension page on Drying Flowers and Foliage for Arrangements.

You may also find this University of Illinois Extension video useful, as it shows a few simple ways to press flowers for use in a flower montage, Pressed Flower Bookmarks or notecards.