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Keep It Natural

Why Choose Natural Dried Flowers?

As June rolls in, the garden is bursting with life, and the Paper Daisies are stealing the show. These beautiful blooms are really starting to thrive, and my drying wall is quickly filling up with clusters of pink and white daisies, creating a stunning display.

I pride myself on air-drying all the flowers I grow, never relying on chemical dyes. I’ve always found that nature provides all the color I need—after all, who really wants purple Wheat or pink Bunny Tail grass? Beyond that, chemical dyes are harmful to the environment, and many of those brightly colored flowers you see in stores are often imported from overseas, particularly China. In a time when sustainability is essential for our future, I encourage you to skip the artificial, dyed flowers that flood the supermarket shelves.

All of my dried flowers come with zero air miles, no dyes, and no chemical bleaches. For the occasional bleached grass or seed head, I simply leave them to the sun and let nature do its magic.

The vibrant pink hues of my Paper Daisies, which you’ll often find featured in my designs, are entirely natural. These flowers are truly remarkable—they retain their colour so beautifully when dried. It’s proof that, when it comes to flowers, nature really does know best.

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Growing Annuals

It’s April and I’ve planted out all my Autumn sowed hardy annuals, which included Larkspur. Last year Larkspur certainly got the better of me! I’d tried to grow it before in the past with no success and since starting my small dried flower business I felt Larkspur was a flower I needed for bouquets.

So I stored my seeds in the fridge for a few weeks, this is called Stratification, which I hadn’t done in the past and it turned out that it was quite important! I sowed my seeds in March and waited…and waited. Nothing apart from the odd one. So back to square one and started again, still very poor germination. I really didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Consequently I didn’t have many Larkspur blooms, although the few I did get were beautiful.

I figured out from various reads and advice that the best way was to sow them in the Autumn and over winter them in the greenhouse. Which is exactly what I did. I had fantastic germination and who would have thought that these little seedling could survive -8C temperatures? but they did. Apparently Larkspur quite like a cold spell, and they certainly got that.

They are all planted out in the beds now and will soon be flowering, and finally ill have beautiful Larkspur for my dried flower bouquets.

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Its March!!

Its hard to believe that it is March already, although the weather at the moment feels more like the depths of Winter!!

In the greenhouse all my Autumn sowed hardy annuals are getting to the stage were they need planting out, but I’m going to keep hardening them off for a few more weeks. I have Larkspur, Nigella, Nigella Oriental’s, Briza Maxima and Hares Tail Grass.

The Spring seed sowing is now fully underway with lots of varieties of flowers that will dry beautifully and although its turned cold they are doing really well in the greenhouse under their horticultural fleece. Its early days and I’ve only just started to prick out a few.

The Ranunculus’ that were started off in the Autumn are growing lots of new growth and soon they’ll be some incredible bloom’s, even the later sowed corms are doing so well and will be ready to plant out when this cold snap has passed.

Happy gardening eveyone

Sue.