Dried flower news – Autumn begins

Gosh what a month – we’ve gone from hot sun to hammering rain. This is a really big month in the shop because we are receiving into stock all the Christmas fruits & spices, pine cones etc – the crafters we supply always like to start their projects in plenty of time, so it’s not as early as it seems! Watch this blog for various seasonal makes over the next couple of months (I’ll start gently with the Autmnal ones before getting truly Christmassy!)

My dried flower garden in September

I managed to rescue some poppies and have a go at drying hydrangeas before they were ruined by the rain.

Desiccated poppy heads

The gorgeous poppies which were growing in my garden earlier in the year (see my blog post on drying poppy seed heads) have finished and dried, and I have been round collecting up all the brown desicated flower pods for future projects. The seed heads left to dry on their own in the garden are much more robust than the ones I picked early to dry indoors.

Drying hydrangeas

I have finally had some luck drying hydrangea heads – after a few attempts, I have some dry heads that look almost exactly the same as they did when fresh. Expect a blog post soon about how I did it! (You can see a picture of my hydrangea bush and my last attempt at drying hydrangeas in my July diary post)

Desiccating flowers in the workshop too

Back in July I hung up some fresh feverfew, sea lavender, delphiniums, hydrangeas, roses and cornflowers to dry in my workshop. In general I have been very pleased with the results – see my blog posts on drying sea lavender and drying cornflowers. I was able to make a lovely blue dried flowers bouquet from some of them:

Shopping links – Seasonal dried flowers, dried fruit & spices

Buy a blue dried flower bouquet like the one pictured, or a sea lavender bunch dried in our workshop;
cinnamon sticks, orange slices, star anise, whole oranges, cloves, rose hips, & pine cones