How To Dry Fresh Flowers for Wreaths and Arrangements

NSDisplaying freshly cut flowers instantly makes your home feel more welcoming and lively. But, go fast for 10 days, and you’ll likely have a sad (perhaps moldy) bouquet that frustrates you every time you look at it. Instead of letting the flowers wither to the point of no return, you can dry them, he suggests Connor Nesbit, What is with you leuca . flowers And the winner of the first season of HBO’s full bloom.

“The flowers take on a different personality after they dry, becoming almost an entirely new type of flower,” he says. “Right now, the summer flowers dry out better and are more abundant. I have a local flower grower who only brings me weekly additions because he knows I will dry them; I will make wreaths with them in the fall.”

In particular, Nesbit loves drying roses and aquarium. “There’s a lot of echinacea out there right now, and the pods on those pods are exceptionally dry, and you can squeeze the flowers a little bit,” he says. “Cosmos dries well. There’s yarrow, and even summer hydrangeas can dry very well.” While picking your flowers, he recommends avoiding waterlogged flowers like tulips, orchids, and peonies. “They tend to rot rather than dry out,” he says.

Aside from extending the life of your bouquets, playing with flowers can have a huge impact on your mood and mental health, he explains. Amy Daramos, PsyDLicensed Clinical Psychiatrist. She previously told Well + good. “Flower arranging is a complete sensory experience that can fill your mind and leave less space for anxiety.”

If you can, Nesbit encourages you to get your flowers from local growers. By doing this, “you’ll get really nice things,” he says. Below, you’ll find his tips on how to dry fresh flowers.

How to dry fresh flowers

1. Choose your flowers

Sometimes Nesbit buys a flower bouquet with the intention of drying them on the spot. Other times, they will withdraw from arrangements when they begin to age after their prime.

“You don’t want to leave anything that’s starting to form or die in the vase,” he says. “But sometimes the flowers can be pretty, and for me, that’s an excellent candidate. You can pull that out and put it aside.”

2. Prepare your stems

Wipe the stems to make sure there is no excess moisture.

3. Choose a dark spot

“When you’re drying your flowers, try to keep them out of the sun,” says Nisbet. “This only causes the colors to fade — and they will fade once they’ve already dried, but the sunlight will filter out a lot of that vibrancy more.”

4. Put them to dry

“If I can get a big, beautiful bouquet straight from the flower farms or even straight from the grocery store, and I know I’m going to dry it,” Nisbet says, “sew on that, and then hang it upside down in a really dark room.”

But, if he uses flowers from previous arrangements that are already slightly wilted, Nesbit places them on a flat, airy surface. “I’ll put the petals in the way I want them, and then I’ll leave them there for a week, two weeks, and let them dry naturally on the board,” he says. “It gives it a flat back, and it loses a bit of dimension that way, but it’s still a great way to preserve blooms that you can’t do with the hanging method.”

Any flat surface can work. Nesbit is using a concrete slab left over from renovating an old home. “I think maybe concrete does well because it absorbs moisture,” he says. “But I also did it where you can make a really thin layer of chicken wire ($14) Then put your flowers on that chicken wire and let them dry on that too, as [the wire] It may have been hung at only an inch high [a flat surface]. “

5. Preserve your flowers

Nesbit says let’s put them somewhere you know they won’t be confronted as they will be fragile. To take another step in saving, you have the option of applying a protective like Krylon Ultra UV Floral Protectant. Protect flowers from Krylon ($15) for your dried flowers. “It’s just a thin layer that you can sprinkle on and it helps hold the petals together and prevents things from falling apart,” he says.

6. Show your flowers

Whether you want to display dried flowers in a vase or turn them into a file Crown ($13), Nesbit says it’s a great way to maintain color in your home year-round. other options? “People are coming back to shadow boxes ($27), “Nesbit Stock.” I was playing with petite gowns ($38), tiny glass domes of flowers and dried objects.”

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