Specialty Gardening: Botanicals...Cut and dried!, 1 by Gitagal

Gitagal wrote:
Thanks,

Blossom tracked me down in the Crafts Forum. I imagine she searched for Potpourri??

I do not do anything special, or spectacular, but I do dry all kinds of flower petals from my garden every year. You'll be surprised how much there can be had!
I do not dry whole flower heads--nor do I hang them to dry--I simply take off/apart all the petals as they are soon to "expire" and dry them on big, flat wicker trays. In the Spring--starting with Roses and Peonies--and all through the summer with all kinds of other stuff.

In the Fall--there are Mophead blooms that are turning a beautiful maroon (I cut apart all the individual little flowers), annuals & perennials that are on their last leg--like Salvias, Mums, Marigolds, Ageratum clusters, drying up Brugmansia blooms (they keep their colors wonderfully), colorful foliage of plants--like coleus (cut them apart), Caladiums, top parts of Dusty Millers, Persian Shield, etc....
Seed pods from flowers like--Rose Campion, Columbines, and so on. If I lived near some scrub meadows--I would go looking for other seed pods among the weeds, but I do not, so my potpourri has almost NO fillers in it.

Once you have done this for a few years, you will see what dries and keeps it's color and what does not. As noted above--no white petals look great when dried, and flowers that have a high water content (Impatiens, Begonias, etc.) do not dry well at all.

I grow Straw Flowers and Gomphrenas (Globe Amaranth) just for collecting for my Potpourri. They need no drying.....

Anyway--I store ALL the huge amounts of dried flower petals in a large tote. When I run out of room--I make potpourri balls/pompadours.
I buy pretty lace curtains at Thrift Stores and cut them up in approx. 10"x10" squares. Line each square with another piece of the fine bridal tulle (keeps the chaff in) and fill each with a big hand-full of the dried flowers. Then I tie it off with some spool ribbons and glue a small silk flower to the center of the bow. Done!

When it is time to give these as a gift--or sell some (don't do that much...)--I scent them with Potpourri Oil using a bamboo skewer dipped into the oil and then poked all through the sachet. To keep the scent "in"--I store them in plastic bags.

Here's the "works" from just a few weeks ago.
The tote on the chair is from past years--the bag on the table is just from this past Summer. Lots--NO? The lace curtain is what will get cut up. This was my "mission" a few Sundays ago. Worked on it all day and made 45 balls. That's how many squares I got out of this one-panel lace curtain.

Gita