What do flower experts at Busch’s Florist in Jefferson City love even more than fresh floral arrangements? A home decorated with beautiful dried flowers that last for years! While many people associate dried flowers with outdated decor, they can actually be quite attractive and uplifting inside a home, if they’re dried properly, preserved properly, and used to create lovely decorations.
Dried Pink Roses
To Press or to Dry Flowers?
The answer to this question really depends on the type of flowers you’re going to preserve and how you plan to display them after. Pressing flowers works best with blooms that are flat-faced or less dense such as pansies, asters, and just about any cone-shaped flower you can think of. When pressing a flower, it obviously becomes flattened in the process, so the best flowers to choose are those which won’t lose their most interesting features (silhouettes and markings) when they’re squished.
Garden Girl Bouquet
For any thicker bloom like a rose, carnation, globe thistle, or peony, we recommend drying because these flowers have to be split in half to be successfully pressed. Other flowers that dry beautifully include statice, purple stock, snapdragons, lavender, larkspur, and chrysanthemums. Drying is also the best way to preserve an entire bouquet of flowers, whether they’re mixed or not.
Tips and Tricks for Preserving Pressed and Dried Flowers
The two worst things for preserved flowers are sunlight and humidity. Sunlight will fade flowers and humidity can cause them to rot. We recommend giving dried or pressed flowers a few coats of evenly and gently applied hairspray. This will create a barrier between your flowers, the sun, and the moisture in the air. It’ll also strengthen the otherwise brittle and delicate structures of dried and pressed flowers.
Pressing Flowers
How to Decorate with Pressed or Dried Flowers
Pressed flowers are extremely delicate, so the best ways to use them as decorations in your home are ways that will protect them, too. Our favorite way to display pressed flowers is by arranging them in botanical frames and hanging them on a wall. It’s best not to display these in a bathroom where the air will be more humid than the rest of your home. You can also use pressed flowers to create colorful decoupaged floral designs on jewelry boxes or table surfaces or to create smaller decorative objects like coasters.
Bouquet of Dried Flowers in Glass Vase
The best part about preserving a whole bouquet of professionally arranged flowers is that they’ve already been expertly selected and coordinated. So, they’ll look lovely however you display them. Dried bouquets of flowers can be displayed just as they are in a pretty pitcher or vase. You can also use them to create an attractive floral wreath, using hot glue and a wicker wreath base. These are pretty hung in just about any room of the house, but especially above a mantel piece or a bedroom headboard. Dried flowers can also be displayed in shadow boxes, which will help shield them from dust, sunlight, and humidity.
For more information about the best ways to preserve flowers, display them in your home, or for advice about the best bouquets for drying, we welcome you to stop by Busch’s Florist.
