What's a good way to preserve flowers?

Question

My little boy brings me flowers (usually weeds like dandelions, but it's the thought) almost every day from the yard. I would like to keep some of these because they mean a lot to me. Any ideas on how to keep them from falling apart so I could put them in an album or something?

Answer 1

Air drying large flowers is easy. Just tie them up in a bunch & hang from the ceiling. Try this with strawflowers, goldenrod, hydrangeas, celosia (crested and plumed types), Queen Anne's lace, statice, baby's breath, millet, globe amaranth, salvia, Xeranthemum and many of the "everlastings."

Silica gel can be found in most garden centers, nurseries, or hobby shops. It absorbs moisture from flowers rapidly, thus preserving flower color better than other drying methods. Most flowers will dry in 36 to 48 hours.

You can also dry flowers with either pure clean sand or you can mix equal proportions of borax and yellow corn meal. Add 3 tablespoons of salt (non-iodized) to a quart of the borax/cornmeal mixture.

Place an inch or two of sand or borax/cornmeal mix in a container; scoop away a small amount of sand to form a depression on the surface; place the flower head upright in this depression and press the sand in and around the outside of the flower to support it. Next, scoop a little sand into your hand and allow it to trickle in a fine stream around each petal. Start with the outer petals and work inward row by row, allowing the sand to build up equally on all sides of each petal so its position and shape are not altered. Flowers dried with sand are fragile so be very careful when removing them from the sand. Store in a strong carton to protect the petals from breaking.

Flowers that are good for pressing are : aster, bleeding heart, buttercup, chrysanthemum, columbine, cosmos, dahlia, dogwood, English daisy, geranium, larkspur, lily-of-the-valley, marigold, pansy, poppy, rose, sweet pea, violet, and zinnia.

Here's more ideas for preserving flowers:
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/landscap/h1037w.htm

Good luck! Hope this is helpful.

Answer 2

What a nice idea.
You could press them. Just put them between several layers of printer paper and like inside a magazine, and place between 2 big heavy coffee table books or put some weights on top of it to press. check em in a few days, they tend to stick if just left in the same place the whole time. then you should be able to put in an scrapbook. you can play with how the flower faces and arrange the leaves like you want too.

for hardier flowers such as roses, just hang them upside down by a string and then you could make a dried arrangement using some florist foam in a basket or vase. They dont last too long ( a year? get dusty) but you could enjoy the "surplus" flowers like this a little longer without just thorwing them out.
GL