Hydrangea dried flowers and petals for floristry or confetti

Hydrangea dried flowers are endlessly versatile

Think grand gesture – three large heads in a dramatic urn, or think small – pretty little florets for wedding confetti. Hydrangeas naturally come in every shade of pink, purple, blue and green. Add to that a rainbow of bleached and dyed shades and there’s a Hortensia to fit every colour scheme, whether you are talking about decorating a room or matching a wedding theme.

Colours of Hydrangea dried flowers

Natural shades

As you can see in the pic above, Hydrangeas often dry with tinges of a variety of colours on the same head. They have to be picked in the autumn after their first flush of colour has faded slightly and they start to crisp up. This means that naturally dried Hortensias often have autumnal shades such as purple running through them.

Pastel shades of Hortensia

For paler shades you could try chemically preserved flowers which have been treated with glycerine, sometimes with the addition of bleach and a dye. This method produces some pretty pastel shades not seen in nature, like the peach one below, and with the by-product of flexible stems making fiddly crafts such as flower crowns and hair accessories more practical. These flowers are generally more expensive.

Large Hydrangea heads for home decor and floristry

Large flower heads make for a maximalist display. Bunching a group in a large bowl can make a big impact in an entrance hall for example. Use soft natural colours to highlight your own colour scheme, or neutral faded browns for a natural scheme where textures are more important, perhaps paired with bare wood furniture and seagrass flooring. A large wreath of hydrangea heads can be a statement piece on a front door. For weddings, a few large heads can go a long way to pad out big venue arrangements, and bleached flowers are popular for this.

Snip apart a head to make some tiny florets

Each flower head can be separated into little florets only a few centimetres across. Each mini flower has only four petals. These can be used to add interest to throwing confetti, as table confetti in their own right, or by keeping a little stem they can be used to decorate hair accessories and flower crowns.

A couple of photos above show Hydrangea petals mixed in with Delphinium petal confetti. These are a lovely combo and work in many different colourways, be it contrasting or complementary, due to their contrasting sizes.

Drying your own Hydrangeas

Here are some tips for DIY dried Hortensias:

1. Don’t bother buying them from the florist, they’ll be too sappy
2. Grow your own bush or ask a friend who has one, they’re commonly grown in the UK
3. Wait until late summer or early autumn
4. Wait until there has been a mild colour change in the flowers on the shrub and the petals start to feel a little papery
5. Cut the flowers with as much stem attached as possible
6. Remove any foliage, it’ll only go wrinkly
7. Place the stems in a few cm of water in a vase, on display if you like
8. Don’t overcrowd the stems in case they rot – allow for good air circulation
9. Don’t replenish the water
10. After a few weeks the water will be all gone and the flowers will be crispy dry
11. The amount of time this takes will vary from plant to plant and house to house but check after 10 days

Read more about Hortensias

Look for posts tagged with “Hydrangea” https://driedflowercraft.co.uk/tag/hydrangea

Shopping for dried flowers of Hydrangea

Below is one of various Hydrangea products from our dried flower shop – this naturally dried UK flower head is available seasonally and can be snipped down into clusters and florets as needed. You can see the colour variation in a single head – right across purple, blue and green.