Dried flowers are having a bit of a fashion moment. They are now seen at swanky openings, in chic boutiques, adorning stylists’ own homes and atop the heads of beaming brides. Time for gardeners to get in on the act before winter brings the fresh floral options to a slowdown.
So what can you dry? Just about everything, says sculptor, gardener, and former florist Jane Cush. Cush gardens in Mittagong, in the Southern Highlands, on a property with stunning views over fields that appear to roll all the way, on a clear day, to the surprising point of Centrepoint Tower.
Her charming garden is all about picking, yet one of her favourite subjects for arrangements, both fresh and dried, is one she didn’t even plant. Wild fennel is a bit of a weed, but there is no way Cush is getting rid of it. “It’s so airy and has such good movement and though I’m not a fan of yellow flowers generally, the colour is beautiful and subtle enough to work in any arrangement.”
Amplifying the wild fennel she didn’t plant is the edible fennel and bronze fennel she did. All three keep the bees in a hive in a corner of the vegetable patch happy. Other favourites for drying include artichokes and echinops, or globe thistle, which has golf-ball-sized spiky-looking blue flowers.
Hellebores and hydrangeas also dry well, though Cush advises waiting until the seed has set before picking them to get a longer-lasting bloom. “Dahlias also dry well and keep their colour and I have started to dry peonies as well and find they last about six to 12 months with a faded glory colour.”
Any flowers you want to dry should be picked at their peak. Where you might pick in bud for a fresh bunch, wait til they are fully open for dried. Remove the leaves from the stems, and dry bunches of blooms upside down somewhere dry and dark. Dryness prevents mould and darkness prevents the colour from bleaching.
Upside down? The flower and stem will hold whatever position it is dried in and because straight stems and upward-facing flowers offer the best styling options later, upside down is the best drying position.
Cush dries most of her flowers in her overcrowded shed, where a mass of textures, forms and subtle colour hang from the ceiling and from trellis frames, and lean out of buckets and boxes. And when there is no room in the shed, she also makes use of a clothes rack in the shade or the space near the outlet of the clothes dryer in the laundry.
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