Ironing out floral imperfections

Flowers are beautiful but they don’t last forever. Gayle attempts to enjoy them for a bit longer via the art of flower pressing

There was a flash and a loud bang. And then the air filled with acrid smoke and the distinctly unpleasant aroma of burning flowers. This was my mum’s attempt at speeding up the process of pressing flowers... in the microwave. We had been toying with the idea of doing this for weeks, and finally, the day of experimentation had come.

We waited for a dry, sunny afternoon before we were inspired to forage for pretty flowers – mainly wild species – in and around the garden and along the driveway.

These included buttercups, daisies, periwinkle, meadowsweet, cow parsley, rambler roses, purple vetch, Welsh poppies, yarrow, potentilla, comfrey, campion, geranium, pinks, and my personal favourite – love-lies-bleeding.

As I was looking online for inspiration on what to do with them, I reflected back to my childhood – which was the last time I attempted to press flowers.

I was about five years old and, amazingly, I had the patience to do it the “long way”.

This meant sticking my carefully gathered blooms and buds inside a heavy book and waiting for three or four weeks.

But the results, when they came, were great (in the mind of a five-year-old girl, at least) and I was so proud that I glued them into a scrap book.

Alas, this ended up being stored in the attic where, unsurprisingly, it was eaten by mice.

It was sad, but not the end of the world, as there are plenty of other flowers in the world just waiting to be pressed and what better time to rediscover this art than during the height of summer in partial lockdown?

And there are, as I hinted at, various ways of doing this.

You can press your beautiful blooms between the pages of a heavy book or use a special wooden flower press, which seems a bit like cheating to me. They’re both very effective methods,

thecouriermagazine but you have to wait a few weeks for the final product.

If you’re on a mission to get things done fast, you can use an iron, or, if you’re feeling brave, a microwave.

Mum and I decided to attempt the ironing and microwaving methods, with varying degrees of success.

We picked flowers which had been dried out by the sun; wet plants are prone to mould and therefore best avoided.

Having selected a variety of pink, purple, green, white, yellow and orange blooms, we set to work opening them up and flattening them out, in a bid to show off their amazing, intricate details.

I was first to try the microwave method, initially placing my flowers between sheets of greaseproof paper and then putting these into a heavy book bound with rubber bands.

As soon as I switched on the microwave, I knew something wasn’t right – the turntable wasn’t turning because the book was too big.

Disheartened, I decided to try the iron method.

I’d been sure to check the iron’s steam and water features were turned off, but I’d misread the instructions to keep the iron on a low heat, and instead, had it on full-bore.

I left the iron on for 15 seconds, then took it off, let it cool down, and repeated this process until my flowers were stiff and completely dry.

It was at this point that the flash, bang and cloying smell of burning filled the kitchen.

Mum, in her microwaving mission, had selected perhaps the one and only book in the house that boasted patches of laminated gold on its cover. To be fair, they were small patches, but they were most definitely gold.

And as we all know, microwaves and metal are not good friends...

After the initial panic had subsided, we examined the evidence – the charred book cover, several scorched and blackened pages, and the steaming, browning flowers.

Putting this disaster aside, we instead focused on the ironing method which