Are you ever bummed that your favorite florals are only in season for a short time each year? Us too, we totally get it (even though it feels like we have a new favorite each week). Instead of letting it bring us down, we’ve been figuring out our favorite ways to dry them instead so they stay beautiful all year round!
These zinnias kept a lot of their color even when dried!!
When you think of dried flowers, you might be picturing old, brown, and crusty blooms. But NOT here at Wildly Native!! Properly dried blooms coming straight in from our fields can look just as colorful and enticing as fresh flowers.
How do we dry them?
There are so many ways to dry flowers, from microwaving them, to putting them in sand or silica gel, or air drying. We’ve experimented with all of the different drying methods, but our main squeeze is the old faithful strategy of simply hanging the blooms upside down and waiting. Air drying takes time, especially depending on temperature and humidity, but can have incredible results! Bonus? They’re drying out on their own, completely naturally.
For us, we utilize the ceiling space in the Flower Barn! Everyone who comes to visit us here on the farm looks up as soon as they walk in, it’s hard to miss row after row of dried flowers! At home, you could easily hang them in your garage, mudroom, a less-used room in your house, or even a covered porch (so long as it’s protected from rain and direct sunlight). One of our flower girls even hung up a drying rod in her own kitchen at home!
While we have our drying process down, we still love experimenting. We know by now what plants work best for drying and what results we’re likely to have when it comes to color and fragility… but if we can grow it, why not test out drying it?
Most of our dried flowers are bundled and hung up when we realize we have too many already cut, or a burst of gorgeous weather has pushed more to bloom than we can realistically use at once. If they don’t make it into a fresh arrangement for our flower shop or wedding couples, we love knowing that they won’t go to waste and can have a new lease on life as a dried floral!
Sometimes we’ll even cut and rubber band the bundles straight from the field, if for instance our weddings that weekend are all pink and orange, but we have a lot of white, yellow, or purple florals in bloom. And when the eucalyptus gets over 7 feet tall? Definitely time to prep a few bundles to dry and skip over the shop part of the process!
Do They All Dry Well?
So which flowers are our favorites to dry? We’ll share a few of them below, and for different reasons!!
Yes, the drying process does often change the appearance of the plants and can sometimes result in a more muted color palette than it’s peak season color. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though!! We LOVE having some softer colors and harvest tones for autumn dried flower designs. The slightly toned-down oranges of marigolds, blues of echinops and eryngium, ivory feverfew, mustard yarrow, and burgundy celosia are absolutely gorgeous.
Looking for a brighter dried flower? Some of our favorite colorful dried flowers include strawflower in every shade from yellow to peach to red to white; larkspur in pinks, blues, whites, and purples; statice in purple, sunset hues, yellow, white, pink, and blue; and gomphrena in red, orange, pink, white, and purple!
No matter the variety, we take special care to dry them in a way that will help preserve their colors – definitely keep them out of bright sunlight, and dry while they are still at their best! Humidity will have a negative effect too, so try to keep them dry!
Dried seed pods offer us a completely new approach to some varieties of flowers. Nigella is a gorgeous and dainty spring bloom in blue and white, but their pods are moody spiky round things in burgundy stripes!! Scabiosa gives us little tan puffballs from soft lavender flowers, agrostemma and dara have great texture, and the centers of echinacea and rudbeckia are fun accents too! We also grow breadseed poppies for their pods, which make beautiful decor.
We love adding greenery to our fresh arrangements, so naturally figuring out which greens dry the best was top of our list as well! One of our favorite greens is eucalyptus. Its gentle color, beautiful appearance, and gorgeous scent make it a favorite of ours and our brides. It also is excellent to dry! If you love eucalyptus and want it year round – you’re in luck because dried eucalyptus is an excellent addition to your home. You can even grab a fresh bundle, and it’ll dry over time – especially nice to have in your shower! Mountain mint is another green that dries well, and keeps its luscious scent, too!
Ok They’re Dried… Now What?
We loveeee making dried bouquets and wreaths out of our farm dried flowers!! It’s also the only natural way to have locally grown flowers from every season in one arrangement – you can’t find peonies, eucalyptus, and marigolds all in bloom at the same time otherwise! You can find our dried arrangements and wreaths on our shop site as well as Etsy, and in person at the Chestertown Farmers’ Market on Saturdays!
Creating custom orders is always a favorite of ours, as well. We’ve had a few weddings that were entirely dried, and whether we provided just bouquets or a full line-up it’s always a creative challenge!
We also always sell dried flower bundles of different individual varieties in our Etsy shop if you’re up for the challenge of creating your own dried flower decor. Some customers keep coming back to purchase dried bundles to create their own incredible flower art, and others we have helped through the process of choosing varieties to make their own wedding flowers!
Dried Florals for Weddings?
Have you ever seen a wedding incorporate dried flowers? Some of our brides have requested mixes of dried and fresh for their days, in various color schemes, and we’ve loved them all!
We created this stunner of a bouquet out of entirely dried florals for a styled shoot with Chesapeake Bay Wedding Magazine! Vintage classic decor and the Liriodendron Mansion tied it all together beautifully.
Photos above by Jennifer Quinn Photography
Drew and Logan’s entire wedding included a mix of fresh and dried in autumn hues. We wrote a blog about their day, check it out here!
Photos above by Laura’s Focus Photography
Abby came to visit us in the Flower Barn to choose her dried florals in person, and took home a few buckets worth to create her own DIY Wedding arrangements! We created her bridal bouquet and some other personal florals, and she handled the rest – we love seeing what you create!
Photos above by Audrey Elizabeth Photography.
Don’t forget about dried petals, too! They make an awesome and eco-friendly ceremony or reception exit for the newlyweds.
Photo above by Mary Ella Jourdak Photography
Dried flowers also stay preserved past the wedding day – making it a special keepsake to celebrate your love long after the reception ends. Check out our write-up on things to consider with preserving your bouquet!
So… Whaddya Think?
Dried flowers are perfect for late Fall and Winter when fresh flowers are harder to find in the cool weather. Adding dried flower arrangements or dried flower wreaths to your home is a great way to bring the beauty and joy of flowers to the dreary days of the season. By drying all year long through every flower rotation, we have plenty of fresh and 100% local flowers to see us through! Easy to care for, and long lasting, dried flowers will do best in low humidity and placed out of direct sunlight. Check out our Pinterest board for some inspiration, and be sure to let us know how you’d use dried flowers in your home!
