Drying Flowers

Bex’s cabin. Photo by Botanical Tales.

I am so grateful to Bex for sharing her knowledge about how to dry flowers and which unusual varieties with which to experiment. You can download her beautiful PDF here.

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Hi, I'm Bex Partridge, and I am really excited to be sharing with you today. A bit about myself my business, who I am and lots about dried flowers. So excited to be asked to be part of Gather.

I'm the owner of a creative business called Botanical Tales, which I've been running for about the past five years. I'm a gardener, so I grow lots of flowers that I then go on to dry.  I then make installations and wreaths. I also sometimes do weddings and always with dried flowers rather than fresh. It's not that I dislike fresh flowers, but I just I'm just enchanted by dry flowers and the process that fresh flowers go through to get to become dried.

There are some huge benefits with working with dried flowers, which is of course they're long lasting. They're a sustainable option. And in that sense, they're a good option when it comes to spend your money wisely because obviously they last for a long time.

So I have been working with dried flowers for about five years, but they have always in some way been part of my life. I remember my Grandma having swathes of Helichrysum hanging in her kitchen and pretty dusty displays in the corner of a house, and my mum was always bringing foliage and flowers into dry. So it has always been there, but it's only in the last five years that it's become a thing that I've focused on.

Bex’s cabin. Photo by Botanical Tales.

And not so long ago, dried flowers were really popular and they were considered in much the same way as you would bring your harvest in, at the end of the growing season. You would bring your beetroots and your carrots and your apples in and store them over the winter period to get you through. That's also how people approached flowers as well. So they would bring in the harvest, dry them and then decorate the house with them throughout the winter. But the rise of supermarkets, the rise of convenience, the rise of globalization and the availability of pretty much anything we want whenever we want it meant that this was of thinking changed and dried flowers fell out of favour. As people began to get cheap supermarket blooms that had been bought from the Netherlands where there is a huge kind of flower growing industry. So English flower farming decreased and so did the prevalence of dry flowers because people could get fresh whenever they wanted it.

And of course at the time that seemed like a good thing and that was the case until probably I would say two or three years ago. And then steadily, there become a bit more of an interest in dried flowers. When I first started working on this, I would say pretty much all of the comments I got from people were from a nostalgic perspective. So I love dry flowers. They remind me of my grandma or, Oh, they’re quaint aren't they? Old fashioned. Actually that was quite off putting for me at the time, because clearly I didn't want to be old fashioned… And whilst it's lovely to remind ourselves about grandmas, that's not the kind of look I was going through for my business. But I persevered more and more and I began to realize that actually people were noticing them for what they were. And suddenly I wasn't having to sell them to most people, they just understood that they were amazing and looking at them as a viable option to decorate their homes or potentially use to decorate retail space or something like that.

The last few years have been huge for dried flowers and it doesn't really look like it's going to stop either, which is super exciting. I'm hoping we're going to move away from referring to them as a ‘trendy’ thing, and actually just see them as part of the kind of slow flowers movement, because that's really what they are. They're an extension of the British flower industry, which is flourishing. They enable us all to bring flowers into our home, sell flowers, buy flowers all year round British flowers. And I think that's really exciting.

I have been gardening for over half my life. Longer than that really, but gardening in my own spaces for over half of my life. Prior to that, I was always helping my mum out in the garden. I used to spend my pocket money on flowers for her garden and I've always loved growing flowers and vegetables. And that is a core part of my business in the sense that as much as possible, I try to grow, and try to use my own material in anything that I make and do. Obviously that is sometimes tricky and has been in the past because I've been quite limited on the quantity that I can grow. But moving forward, I'm hoping that I'm going to become more self-sufficient in that sense. And it's interesting because I have always grown in small spaces up until now; we've either lived in towns or we've lived in cities with terraces. I have had an allotment space, but again, relatively small, just a half size plot. I've always managed absolutely fine and found a way to cram as much as I can into very small space but what I have now is this half acre of garden and which is relatively flat and pretty mature when it comes to the flowers that already exist here. I'm able for the first time to plan on a larger scale. What I have learned over the years is more and more about what grows and dries well and where to place your time and efforts within your garden space. Obviously this is still an evolving thing as it always is if you're a gardener. But when I first started working with dried flowers that first year I bought pretty much all of the flowers that I worked with. I bought them in because I just had a baby and my head was not screwed on properly… And something twigged as I was working with them, that I was not really enjoying the kind of form of them. They're quite uniform. I suddenly dawned on me, why don't I just grow my own? Suddenly I'm seeing all these old varieties that my grandma used to dry, and I was thinking why could I not grow these myself?

So that next year I started on my journey of growing my dried flowers to work with. I convinced my husband to turn over about third of our plot to flowers. I focused predominantly on growing annuals for drying, and actually to be honest, I was a bit haphazard about what I did. I just went to Chiltern Seeds and just bought lots of packets of things because back then there was no indication as to whether the flower would dry. You just had to know. I just picked what I loved and planted out how I wanted. And it was probably the best year that I've ever had growing; I think because there was no rigidity to it. I was just free flowing and no stress. So anything that worked was a miracle in that sense and I grew some beautiful things. All of them annuals.

As the years have gone on, I've been trialing more and more different annuals, not just the sort of classic everlastings but more interesting varieties that you wouldn't immediately think would dry.  I started exploring lots of different options there and continue to do that. And it was obviously a yearly cycle for the annuals; the sowing, pricking them out, hardening them off, putting them in the ground, nurturing them on an allotment with no hose.

Then I took a visit to a Piet Oudolf garden in Norfolk where, and it was autumn time. And I was looking around at this stunning matrix perennial planting system. That is his style. I suddenly realized, all of these flowers here, dry flowers, grasses, everything dries. It's already drying in situ, and all of them are perennials. So wouldn't it be fantastic to have a garden where you have year round interest? You have plants that come back every year. So you're not having to either sow the seeds and which although I love it, it's very laborious.

And I got really excited and I tried to replicate that in my tiny town garden. And it just didn't work because my border was just too small. This is what I'm trying to replicate here in my new growing space. I have growing spaces with some beds for sowing and growing annuals, and then I have a big centre flower bed area that I'm filling to the brim with perennials in this semi matrix style planting. With the idea being that I will then have my annuals every year, which of course I couldn't do without, but then I also had this beautiful year round interest flower bed space. I think for me these unusual or different kinds of flowers that you dry, such as the perennials and the shrubs, they are really important to me. My work needs to be more than just a bunch of standard everlastings. I want my work to reflect how my garden looks or what I'm seeing when I look out the window or how nature would grow. It's really important that I have a mix of all these textures, tones, shapes, sizes, and wiggly bits.

Of course the other benefit with perennials and the other reason I'm obsessed with them is that they are much more hardy. From a maintenance perspective and withstanding this kind of crazy weather that we're having at the moment, which is only going to get worse as climate change increases, they can stand the test of a period of drought as well as lots of rain, intense frosts in the winter, with limited issues. This is really important for me because, with my work, I need to know that I have always will have my perennials. And so if something fails when I'm growing my annuals, or if we have a very wet summer or very cold summer, like the spring we're having now, it's not the be all and end all. This is something that is only going to become more and more important as time goes on and we feel the impacts of climate change more and more with the changing of the weather patterns.

Classic ‘everlastings’

These are flowers that, when you cut them and dry them, they stay the same as they were on the plant, the size, the petal structure, the vibrancy of colour, everything stays the same as they dry and they will stay the same for a very long period of time, maybe years if kept in the right conditions.

Strawflowers

Although very traditional, these are now available in lots of really beautiful colours.

Strawflowers grown by Oak & Earth, photo by Botanical Tales.

Acroclinium

A giant double strawflower with a long stem.

Rhodanthe

Also known as sunray or pink paper daisy, I find this a bit tricky to grow. They grow wild in places like Australia so I think that gives an indication of the type of climate that they like and they've got quite fleshy stems. They're really susceptible to frost and too much damp stops their growth is my experience, but they are absolutely beautiful.

Statice

There are some beautiful colors out there now for statice although I also grow Limonium. These are forms of statice. Sea lavender has a much finer head to it than the normal statice. It can be perennial. The perennial versions can be quite hard to get growing from seed, but it's really worth it.

Strawflowers and Statice are both cut and come again.  I sow mine in the greenhouse from January and then succession sow throughout the season and I will be getting flowers up until October, November, depending on how the weather is. You get so much out of one plant, it's the same with statice.

Click on image to download pdf of varieties to grow

Top unusual varieties to grow

Once you look beyond the usual everlastings, there are a whole other bunch of flowers that you can dry. The list is endless and it's going on and on as I continue to try to dry everything!

These are a bit different to the everlastings in that it will change in structure and form and potentially color as you dry it and, invariably, the flowers won't last as long when they're dry. However, these flowers still look beautiful when they’re dried.

Many of them perennials, but I’ve also suggested some annuals as well.

Larkspur

Smoky eyes is lovely because it goes an antiquey color. It shrinks quite significantly from what it would have been on the plant but it looks beautiful.

Cornflowers

They also shrunk in size but retain their colour. Burgundy is particularly lovely. Again, in comparison to what it's like when it's fresh, the petals are much, much smaller, but it looks beautiful. But quite significantly different in its kind of shape and structure.

Daisies

Feverfew, asters, Michaelmas daisies. Lots in the Daisy family that dry. Again it will not be that big, beautiful flower that you have when it's fresh but it looks stunning nonetheless.

Grasses and seed heads

I’m obsessed with seed heads and grasses at the moment. They bring such movement.  If you were to go out into a garden now, you'll probably find lots and lots that can be picked and hung up to dry, or wait until the seeds have dispersed and then dry them.

Spring flowers

As spring is coming to an end, I'm thinking of things that potentially could be out there now. Cowslip seed heads are really lovely. Bluebell that have set seed if you have them in the garden. Obviously don’t pick from the wild and ideally leave the seeds to disperse before you pick them. Wallflowers will dry and then you can also wait for the seed heads to come. And then we'll also be drying sweet rocket.

Seed heads

Poppies are the obvious choice for drying. The drumstick varieties are adapted for drying and so are perfect. Scabious seed heads are also really lovely. They can get a bit battered and bruised if the season is a hard one, but they are still wonderful.

Honesty is flowering now (May) and will go to seed probably by, I say June, but with this weather, I just don't know. And they can be picked dried, and then de-podded to get those beautiful silvery desks in the middle.  I think seed heads grasses is just no-brainer they're there and they can make a beautiful kind of difference to a display. When it comes to drying, It's really simple and easy to do, and you don't need anything special at all. But there are three rules that you should try to stick to as much as possible to make sure that you get best results from drying.

Tips for successful drying

One

The first one is the space in which you dry in needs to be completely free of moisture. So that means somewhere like a bathroom or a kitchen or a damp outbuilding or shed is not going to work. When you're drying, you're trying to draw moisture out of the plant and that needs to happen at a pretty steady rate for it to be effective. If you have a space which is full of moisture, that it's going to be very difficult for the moisture to leave the plant and the plants material would just go mouldy. Once you have problems with mould, it can spread. If you don’t have a damp-free space, there are ways around it. Dehumidifiers do work. Not a necessity, and it's only because this is my business that I had to invest in one.

Two

The second one is temperature. So as much as possible, you want to have an ambient room temperature, for the majority of the time when you're drying your flowers. That means not too hot, not too cold. If it's too hot, the flowers would dry too quickly and they'll probably go brittle and that made them really hard to work with. If it's too cold, the moisture takes too long to leave the plants. And you might be back in the situation that you had if you have moisture in your air, which is they can go a bit damp and moldy. That's particularly the case with the sort of tulips and the ranunculus and things that take a lot of drying.

Three

The final one is light. Light is a bit of a funny one because I will always recommend that you dry things in a dark space, but the reality is I don't do that. There's a couple of reasons for that: I personally love to see plants as they dry, to watch the process. I want to understand and see how long it takes them in and what happens to their structures, and if they're shoved in a dark space, that makes it really difficult for me to do that.

What I will say is that as long as you have it have them drying out of direct sunlight, you should be fine. I dry everything here in my studio on my test wall, so I can see how they'll dry. It's in light although it doesn't get any direct sun.

The reason you don't want them to dry in direct sunlight or too much intense light is that the light can fade the flowers and it can affect their color. They can also go a bit brittle, same as with the heat. The exception to the rule I would say is if you are, if you have something like an ammi and you dry it in a greenhouse, as long as it's not too damp but somewhere super warm with light, you can actually naturally bleach plants, which is beautiful. (Grace adds: This also works with Bells of Ireland.)

Storage

You can dry flowers either in bunches of five or seven, although things like tulips will benefit from being hung individually so there is air circulating around. Strip all the leaves off first.

Things mostly take between two to six weeks to dry. They can be left in situ whilst they're dried, if that's what you wish to do; I leave a lot of my things just hanging in there until I want to use them. However, you can pack them up into cardboard boxes with tissue, paper, and newspaper and store them until you want to use them. The main thing is that you need to keep them moisture free.

I hope you found this useful and they’ve enjoyed the film as well. There is also a PDF of my favorite annuals, perennials, and tricky flowers to dry so that you can have a go yourself., I hope I've inspired you, and I hope you have lots of fun this coming year drying all your flowers.