I admit it. I am a girly girl and I love flowers. Growing fresh, cut for vases, given as gifts, I love them all.
…but I have a love/hate relationship with their ephemeral nature.
In some ways, the way they die so fast makes you appreciate them more, I suppose. But, especially for some of my favorite flowers I have an innate desire to save them as best I can.
Some flowers can dry upright in a vase. In our home, Lily of the Valley and some of the smaller daffodils dry just that way!
For fleshy flowers that you want to dry whole and use in things like potpourri, I recommend drying them upside down, as though you were drying herbs in an Edwardian kitchen, or putting them in the dehydrator.
Other flowers, we like to press into books until they are dry, and use later for other things. Bookmarks have been a personal favorite, but the dried flowers also can be made into resin works, and they make great additions to happy mail.
For any dried flowers you’re not using right away, I recommend storing them with a desiccant to keep the moisture out.
