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Garden Gleanings


© Carol Wallace
Page 3

Nov 6, 1998


If you keep looking around, you may find that you still have flowers suitable for drying. Our frost is uncommonly late this year, and so even here in zone 6 I still have roses, Russian sage, lavender and other blooms that can either be dried to make vase arrangements, used in potpourri (along with scented geranium leaves) or used in holiday wreaths or even as tree decorations. I did a terrific small Victorian style tree one year trimmed with ribbons, lace and dried flowers - extremely romantic!

And if you still have pansies, they are extremely easy to press, as are other flat flowers and attractive leaves and grasses. Try gluing them to card stock for homemade floral greeting cards or pictures.

Notice, I haven't even mentioned the obvious yet - evergreen boughs and winter bloomers like the heaths that are just beginning to flower in my garden. Gardens are truly a treasure chest of wonders!

So before the really killer cold rolls in, take a last look around and see what your own garden might yield in the way of fall and holiday decorating materials. Whether you make wreaths or potpourri or simply dry some flowers for vases, it is a way of keeping the garden with you all year.

Family.com offers instructions on basic wreath-making.

Sage online offers advice on how to decorate a natural wreath

The University of Missouri Department of Horticulture offers advice on drying flowers

Nature's Herb and Potpourri offers potpourri recipes.

Make a flower press to preserve your flowers for cards and pictures.

Here are some more decorating tips from the garden written especially for this article by Nancy Maltais, our Greenhouse Gardening editor. And if the frost got to your garden too soon, you can find great wreaths and fixing at Maltais Flower Farm.

Great bows dress us any floral decoration. Learn how from Floral Home

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages
20.   Dec 3, 1998 2:59 PM
In another thread someone mentioned taking autumn leaves and gluing them to a box and coating them with polyurethane, which also seems to have preserved them nicely.

I had my own wreath-making adve ...

-- posted by CarolWallace
19.   Dec 3, 1998 12:55 PM
Thanks for the wax tip. I love the fall leaves, but here only the vine maples turn those beautiful shades of red, the others turn yellow. It is because it is too mild here. But none of them last very ...

-- posted by Maryel
18.   Nov 9, 1998 3:07 PM
as I was sitting at my kitchen table staring at a vase full of rooting cuttings. And that was when you were talking about how nice the hydrangea looked all in a row while they were drying.

I looked ...

-- posted by CarolWallace
17.   Nov 8, 1998 8:10 AM
I didn't realize that they would continue to grow and develop indoors! I'm going to have to try that. I think some clematis are better thanothers in this regard - and my Duchess of Edinborough was sp ...

-- posted by CarolWallace
16.   Nov 8, 1998 2:01 AM
Although I don't know how long they would hold up. I like to pick the seeds before the hairs develope. Bring them in and watch the hair grow! Hey maybe for an elf beard! ...

-- posted by Deb_TT



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