Drying Tonight!

One of my favourite things about running a seasonal flower business is handling the flowers.  My ‘flower handling’ is at it’s peak when preparing flowers for drying. There is nothing nicer than hanging a quantity of stems up to dry, then, once dry, running your fingers down the stem to remove a mass of beautiful blossoms. It’s equally satisfying to pick off individual blooms for drying and being able to rummage your hands through hundreds of beautiful flowers to ensure they have plenty of air circulating around them for efficient drying. When they are finally dry it’s like being in a sweet shop, with a selection of desiccated flower colours in store.

It is well known that delphiniums and larkspur dry beautifully and by that I mean, they dry quickly and maintain their original colour pretty much indefinitely. These are therefore a must for my confetti garden.



Larkspur
These are easy flowers to dry on their stems and look lovely just left on the stems or as loose petal confetti.

Delphiniums
When drying delphiniums, the whole individual flowers on a stem remain intact quite easily and again the colour is very authentic, the flowers pictured below are from last year’s drying and are still so blue!

Wallflowers
Now what can I say ... wallflowers were one of the many reasons I started growing cut flowers, I could never find them for sale as a cut flower in shops.  “Why?” I thought ... beautiful scent, fantastic vintage look, what's not to love?  They blossomed beautifully in the spring this year so I thought I would dry them too to see how they performed.  They are exquisite dried, antiquey, with lots of depth of colour and texture which is provided by the open flowers contrasted with the tight closed buds.  These are my absolute favourite dried flower this year!

Cornflowers
Again, they keep their true blue colour beautifully after drying.  Imagine those scattered on an iced blueberry muffin.

Clarkia
I have spoken about these little beauties in a previous blog in August so they need no further explanation and the dried blooms speak for themselves.

Amaranthus Caudatus
They go light and fluffy when dried.

Calendula
Now get your sunglasses out!  I didn’t expect such a true maintenance of colour for such a bright, bright flower but here it is and in comparison with the fresh blooms I don’t think there has been any fading during the drying process. They look lovely as whole flowers or as a scattering of the removed petals.

A perfect selection of dried flowers to see me through the forthcoming months of relative flower abstinence.  They are beautiful for table decoration, present fillers as well as confetti and the edible ones can be sprinkled on cakes for that extra carnival feel during the winter months!