Drying Hydrangeas
A Brief Guide to Drying Hydrangeas
Drying hydrangeas can be done at home, for much less than you would pay for them at a florist. And it's not all that hard to do. The secret to drying hydrangeas and making them look like you bought them is in selecting the right time to pick them.
You might think that the time to cut the blossoms would be when they are at the height of their color. That's not the right time. If you want to have success in drying hydrangeas, you need to practice patience first. The blooms need to spend time on the plant first, to dry naturally, before you pick them. Plan on picking blooms somewhere between August and October.
In southern climates, hydrangeas generally age on the plant to a greenish color before they pick up shades of other colors as Autumn arrives. In cooler climates, the blooms are more into shades of purple and blue. These blooms are all beautiful, but each is different. If you want to experience different colors than you can grow locally, you can buy inexpensive blooms or shrubs on eBay, or from a mail-order florist in another part of the country.
Leave the blooms on the shrub where they belong, until well into the summer. At that time, the petals will begin to show age and begin to look “vintage”. Leave them on the bush for even longer, and they start showing shades of pink and burgundy. This plan is for a warm area – in cooler areas you might want to pick the blooms a bit sooner, since fall weather will affect you earlier.
When you cut the blooms, take the leaves off and put the blooms in a vase to dry. You can add water to the vase or not, your preference. You do not need to hang the blooms upside down to dry, unless the stems are too weak to hold them. If you want the blooms to hold their best color, use silica gel when you are drying hydrangeas.
You can dye your drying hydrangeas with Rit dye, and this can produce light shades or deep shades of color. If you wish to make wreaths from your hydrangeas after they dry, put the heads of the flowers in water for fifteen minutes or so. This will make them more pliable so you can bend them into shape to attach to your wreath form.
After you finish attaching the hydrangeas to the wreath form, let the wreath dry for about a day. In using the dipping in water process, you will lose a lot fewer blooms to breakage. And the next day, when you check on your project, you'll have a beautiful wreath to use as a decoration or a gift.