Capture the beauty of spring in a jar
After your garden has finished blooming, put the remains to use with these DIY projects
Whether it’s a backyard filled with blooms, a container kitchen garden on a balcony or tending to a windowsill herb garden — you may be wondering how to enjoy your bounty after they’ve bloomed.
The fragrance of fresh flowers like lilacs is a joy to have in your home, but they are fleeting. Cut flowers will only last a few days in water, but there are many alternative uses for your garden bounty. While dried lavender sachets tucked into drawers, and edible flowers such as roses and nasturtiums used to decorate cakes, may be familiar, they take on a new life when infused into syrups for cocktails and sodas or transformed into ink.
Melissa Jenkins creates botanical inks from plants foraged in her garden and the fields surrounding her farm in Erin, Ont. — about an hour north of Toronto.
“I love being out in nature and knowing that I actually made this with my hands — taking something quite literally from grassroots to seeing it on paper,” says Jenkins who gathers plants and flowers such as marigolds from her vegetable garden, goldenrod and wild grapes to create natural inks — transposing nature into art.
“I like to say that artwork painted with natural inks are living works of art,” says Jenkins, who makes the ink by simmering plants gathered in a pot of distilled water with some alum (available at the grocery store) which helps to bring out the colour. The mixture is left to infuse overnight, is strained with a colander, and then cheesecloth or pantyhose to squeeze out every last drop of the colourful liquid.
It’s a fun experiment to try with children — to see what colours you can create from nature, says Jenkins, whose inks are sold as kits in her Etsy shop and include ink recipes so ink bottles can be reused.
“Anybody can create it with just a few household items,” says Jenkins “If you want to get a little bit more longevity, you can add gum arabic — a thickener that comes from a tree, available in liquid or powder, from art stores — you mix it in to make it a bit thicker and it helps the ink to last longer and adhere to paper.”
Christine DuRoss, co-owner of the Wild Woven Collection — a collection of botanically dyed textiles — says she has found many ways to enjoy botanicals long after they’ve bloomed.
“I’ve been interested in herbalism for a number of years and I like to make herbal infusions — teas, steeped over several hours in a covered vessel with plants grown in her garden — like leaves from the raspberry bush or roses — which can be enjoyed at every stage — from spring buds to rosehips in the autumn,” says DuRoss who harvests the flowers once the buds are at the point where they are just about to blossom.
“I’ll collect some to dry, once dry they are super vibrant in colour and smell really pretty. I’ll use those as edibles — to garnish food or grind it into a powder to use as a tonic, or to make teas. Roses are nourishing, high in vitamin C and have an uplifting quality.” Once they’ve bloomed and are starting to wilt a little bit, flowers are harvested and frozen to use for bundle dyeing silk bandanas for collection. In fall, once the rosehips develop, they are collected, dried, and used as teas.
Whether used fresh or dry, there are some general rules of thumb when it comes to harvesting flowers. First, not all flowers are edible, make sure you know exactly what you’re picking; avoid plants that have been sprayed with chemicals — if you don’t know how it’s been cared for, or it’s in an area exposed to roadside pollution, leave it alone; once picked, make sure flowers are washed and free of unwanted critters — give them a little shake and let them rest a bit before using; dry individual buds flat on a tray or gathered in small bunches hanging upside down in a dry, dark space.
West Coast Seeds has a helpful list of edible flowers and Northern Bushcraft is a good resource for identifying wild, edible plants in Ontario, and if you’re foraging, check out the website ediblewildfood.com for tips and rules, says DuRoss.
If foraging in your garden or the wild sounds intimidating, it’s easy to make a comforting cup of herbal tea from a pot of herbs you’ve grown on your windowsill. The most common are mint, camomile and lavender. Just pick a few leaves, give then a quick rinse, pour hot water on top and let it steep, covered for 3-5 minutes. No need to strain it.
“After picking, crush and squeeze what you pick to release the oils. That's where the magic is and what makes them truly therapeutic,” says Kara Petrunick who created a line of wellness teas that include 12 different blends made using organic loose leaf botanicals, sourced locally in Ontario.
If lavender is growing in the garden, enjoy it in bloom, then harvest and dry the flowers to use in a variety of ways — including dried bouquets and wreaths. While you might think of lavender as being soapy and fragrant, that really is the level of camphor speaking to your taste buds, says Ian Baird, owner of Terre Bleu, a family run lavender farm in Milton.
Lavender has hundreds of uses. Just make sure you know the difference between different lavenders.
“English lavender is the one most prone to being used for culinary use — they have a much lower camphor content,” says Baird. “While French lavender tends to be higher in camphors so we use those in our distillery for making essential oils. It’s probably the most significant thing to speak about the difference. Camphor has some good medicinal properties in it but it doesn’t taste great.”
The 160-acre farm grows, harvests, dries and also distils oils in both English and French lavender used in 80 products made using lavender grown exclusively on the farm, and sold in its shop and online. English lavender available as dried culinary buds are often used in baking but available in many formats at the farm shop or online — from chocolate ganache and shortbread cookies to cheese and lavender simple syrup.
“One of the simplest things you can make is to take some of the culinary bud and put it in a loose-leaf tea holder and enjoy it as a tea or add to various recipes for flavouring,” says Baird.
Baird recommends harvesting lavender from the garden by cutting it about two inches above the woody stem of the plant if you want to give it a good pruning, or just grab a fistful of stems of the flower above the green area and cut those off. Bundle the stems into small bunches no bigger than one inch in diameter and put an elastic around them, and hang them upside down in a dark, dry and ideally warm space, to help it dry faster.
Darkness is important to avoid fading, if you put it in darkness they will hold their colour more and it makes for a nicer presentation on food or as a bouquet, says Baird. “To release the fragrance of a dried bud, crush it between your fingers.”
Lilac syrup
Experiment with making an herbal or floral infused simple syrup that you can enjoy in cocktails and sodas. It’s easy to make and can be customized with whatever herb or edible flower that’s ready to harvest.
Don’t forget to shake off any dirt or bugs that may be hiding and give the flowers a good rinse in cold water. 1 cup (250 mL) of water 1 cup (250 mL) of sugar
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of lilac flowers, stems removed a few blueberries, frozen is best to add a colour boost a slice of lemon
Bring sugar and water to boil, turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add flowers to a sterilized, heatproof jar and pour hot syrup over the flowers in the jar. Add a few blueberries and a slice of lemon. Cover with lid and let the mixture steep for a couple of hours on the counter.
Strain the mixture in fine mesh colander to remove flowers, berries and discard lemon. Pour back into the jar and refrigerate for up to two weeks.