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Making
your Summer Flowers Last I have to confess I became a gardener for the flowers. I appreciate foliage and structure and all that, but it's the magic of the flowers that pull me into the garden. But how can you make this summertime wealth of flowers last? The easiest way to bring your flower garden indoors to enjoy all year is to dry flowers. One advantage of living in the Central Valley is we seem to live in a natural drying oven. You'll be amazed at the vibrant colors and lovely shapes of your home-dried flowers. To find out which flowers dry best from your garden, experiment with different kinds. Cut flowers when they are completely dry, not wet from dew or sprinklers. Collect three to five of each kind and tie the ends together with a rubber band. Hang your flowers upside down in a dark, well-ventilated area like the garage. Once the stems and flowers have hardened, you can use them all over your house. Stick them in a vase or a basket and you've got a lovely memento of your summer garden. If you get tired of them or they get dusty, throw them out and make another bouquet. After all, they didn't cost you a thing. Roses are my all-time favorite dried flowers. You can dry buds and foliage right up to fully open flowers, as long as they haven't started to drop their petals. It is really interesting to see how the colors change as they dry. Most roses darken in color, but some dry almost the same color. Other wonderful dried flowers are delphiniums, larkspur, statice, celosia, achillea, hydrangea, gomphrena - the list goes on and on. Try drying foliage, too. I've dried lambs ear and dusty miller with great success. Once you start drying flowers you may find you need a drying rack. My first drying efforts were hung all over my husband's workbench, which was convenient for me but not for him. After a few months of this, he built me a wonderful, inexpensive drying rack. He nailed two-by-fours to the ceiling in our garage. Then he stapled the wire mesh used for stucco to the two-by-fours. A roll of electrical wire and a pair of wire cutters gave me an inexhaustible supply of hooks. Now, even our garage looks like a garden! Drying flowers is just one of many ways to capture your summer garden. Pressing flowers is a time-honored method of preserving the fleeting beauty of flowers. All you need is a stack of books to get started, but you can also buy a flower press. Place your flowers on a sheet of paper, being careful they don't touch each other. Place several sheets of paper on top, then assemble another page of flowers. Lots of flowers can be stacked between many sheets of paper and pressed until dry, which will take several weeks. A large number of flowers can be dried at one time, however. For those of us who are impatient, there are now microwave flower presses available. Although only a couple of flowers can be dried at one time, you'll have your finished product in only a couple of minutes. Many flowers press beautifully, particularly those that are relatively flat to start with, like pansies, salvia, and daisies. Roses without too many petals, like shrub roses, also press well. Experiment with a wide variety of flowers and foliage to see what presses best from your garden. Variegated foliage makes a lovely addition to a pressed composition. My daughter discovered another great use for the summer garden - potpourri. She snipped foliage and flowers from roses, lavender, rosemary, and other herbs and broke them into small pieces. She dried them in an open basket in the garage and made homemade potpourri which is beautiful and smells great, too. It's too hot to plant right now, but the weather is perfect for
preserving your beautiful flowers. The next time you're in your
garden, look with a new eye at all your plants and experiment with
some of these garden crafts. It's a great way to keep your summer
garden with you all year. June 19, 2003 |