Susie’s Garden
Winter Colour
Our garden is full of colour in early autumn, rich glowing colour that I’d like to capture and be able to enjoy throughout the winter.
So I cut small bunches of flowers to dry them, hanging them upside down in a simple technique known as air drying. I strip most of the leaves from the stems and collect them up in bunches of no more than 10 stems each so that the air can circulate.
I use an elastic band, not string, so it tightens on the stems as they shrink. After a couple of weeks the beautiful colours are preserved.
I grow a range of annuals especially to use as dried
flowers. Nigella with its exotic-looking seed pods, sky-blue cornflowers, statice which has the common name of sea lavender and helipterum, the straw flower, which has papery pink petals.
I learned a lot about dried flowers when I ran Chester’s Walled Garden because I cut and air-dried lots of different varieties for the shop. I hung them from the shop beams; visitors loved seeing the rows of vivid colours and enjoying the scents of drying herbs.
Yarrow or achillea has flat-topped golden, red or pink flowers. This, along with different types of grasses, makes a good backdrop to other flowers when I put them together in a bouquet.
Lady’s mantle, such a useful filler in a fresh bouquet, also provides soft greenery when dried.
I find the best way to dry it is to stand lady’s mantle in a cardboard box with the flaps raised to make the sides high enough to support the flower heads.
Even some really large flowers can be dried. I’ve had success with globe artichokes and cardoons, prickly sea hollies and acanthus.
Priorwood Garden in the Scottish Borders is Scotland’s only dedicated dried flower garden. Flowers and herbs are grown in beautiful display borders, harvested and sold in the shop. You can see the flower drying room and learn how it is done.
It’s inspiring to realise just how many colourful flowers can be preserved.