At last, a dry ‘Sundae’!

Yes, some warm, dry weather reaches Suffolk at last!

As a celebration of this wonderous dryness, here is a post about dried flowers and as it’s Sunday I'm going to include some sundae dishes, just because I love them. 

I dry many flowers from my cutting garden to use as table ‘scatterings’, potpourri and confetti.  Drying flowers creates different challenges to preparing fresh cut flowers. Cut flowers need considerations such as, what is the best time of day and bloom stage to cut flowers for optimum vase life, how to prepare them appropriately for bunching and how well they will decay. Dry flowers need some similar considerations i.e. when to cut the flowers for drying but after this it’s important to consider how to hang and prepare different flowers for drying.  Some flowers I will hang in small bunches upside down in the airing cupboard (Combi boiler owners have a disadvantage here!) others I will remove the individual flower heads and dry flat. 

Vintage sundae dishes are great to have around for displaying fresh floating or dry flowers.

From left to right starting at the top left corner we have dried: Ammi Majus, pink Cornflowers, blue Cornflowers, Hollyhock, Love-in-a-mist, pink Larkspur, purple Larkspur, Calendula, Orlaya Grandiflora, Rosebuds, Delphiniums, Wallflowers, Scabious Miss Willmott, Stocks, Delphiniums and finally Geum Mrs Bradshaw.

I am always delighted at how well most flowers keep their colour when dried.  Most of the above were dried last year and kept in brown paper bags so they don't sweat and they are not exposed to the light.

Orlaya Grandiflora

Miss Willmott

Mixed Cornflowers

Stocks. I picked these at a late flowering stage and a little extra 'antiquey' brown can be seen which I particularly like.  They also retained some of their beautiful scent.

Calendulas

 

 

 

Mmmm, lovely to have a little dryness for a change!