Seasonal Features
Pressed flowers: keeping summer indoors
5 min read
Pressing flowers is one of the oldest crafts on record — Victorian botanists kept whole albums of them — and it's having a quiet revival as a way to mark a season, a wedding bouquet, a hike, a garden you don't want to forget.
What presses well
Flat-petalled blooms are the easiest: pansies, cosmos, larkspur, daisies, ferns, fine grasses, herb foliage. Three-dimensional flowers like roses or peonies need to be sliced in half lengthwise before pressing, or substituted with their individual petals.
The press doesn't need to be a press
A heavy hardback book — a dictionary, an old atlas — with blotting paper or plain printer paper between each layer works perfectly. Change the paper after 48 hours to wick away moisture and avoid browning. Most flowers are fully dried and flat after seven to ten days.
Mounting in glass
A floating double-glass frame is the most flattering: the dried flowers appear to hover, and light passes through their veins. Arrange loose, photograph the layout, then add a tiny dab of clear PVA on the back of each stem to keep them in place as you close the frame.
Three projects to start with
A single stem in a small square frame, hung in a cluster of three or five. A wedding-bouquet record: a circular arrangement of the actual blooms from the day. A monthly calendar — one frame per month of a year in your garden, eventually a wall.