As the seasons begin to change, so do the flowers you pick from your garden, see at the market, and buy at Trader Joe’s. But just because your favorite flowers aren’t blooming anymore doesn’t mean you have to give them up for the rest of the year—you just have to deploy some crafty, innovative approaches to keeping them preserved.
Of course, Joanna Gaines knows exactly what you're looking for.
In a video she posted on Instagram last week, she shows off a large, round glass jar stuffed full with beautiful dried pink and purple flowers. To commemorate the season, she tied on a brown paper label with a handwritten “Summer 2023." She captioned the post: “Bottling up Summer the best I know how✨ {dry or press your garden beauties before you bottle them up}" and added Taylor Swift’s song “August," for a nice touch.
Thankfully, it’s not difficult to replicate Gaines’s DIY preserved flowers: All you need to do is dry or press your favorite flowers, place them in a bottle, and display them on a shelf or coffee table to make the perfect centerpiece.
Most types of flowers can be dried easily. If your blooms have sturdy stems, you can leave them in an empty vase in a cool, low-humidity room and let nature do the work—but if you don’t want your flowers to droop, hang them upside down while they dry. To prevent mold, space out the flowers so that air gets between each petal. If your flowers are struggling to dry, turn a fan on low nearby to keep the air circulating.
If you decide to dry your flowers by hanging them, you’ll likely want to keep the stems fairly long. Once they’ve reached the level of moisture necessary to be bottled, cut the stems off completely so they easily fit in a jar.
You can also dry out your bouquet by covering the flowers in silica sand, microwaving them for a minute, and letting them finish drying. Again, make sure to cut the stems.
Once you have your completely dried flowers, toss them in a glass jar and seal it off. You want them to dry fully before you bottle them up to avoid mold, wilting, and any other issues. Create a label to capture the summer's memories, and put them on display for as many seasons you want.