Wheel of the Year Crafts: Preserving Spring Flowers

Snowdrops are among the hardiest of spring plants. There's a carpet of them in my garden at the moment, having survived the recent gales as well as frost and rain. It is traditionally considered unluckly to bring them indoors, but I decided to risk it in order to try preserving a few to photograph in later months. 

I'm writing a Pagan Portals title on the Wheel of the Year for Moon Books. For the cover image I want to include flowers, leaves and berries from all seasons. I'm having to preserve anything not evergreen or always in bloom to photograph them at the same time. Last autumn I had a go at preserving fallen leaves and that's worked very well. They're still supple and look good. 

Spring flowers can be pressed or dried by hanging them upside down somewhere dry, dark and cool but not cold. However, I recently learnt of another method of drying flowers and I'm giving that a go. Apparently you can use silica gel. You can buy big tubs of it specifically for flower preservation, but a friend said you can also reuse those tiny silica gel packets that come with all sorts of things from electrical goods to lateral flow tests. I'm all in favour of ruducing waste, so that's what I've tried. 

I put a few little early flowers from my garden into a sealed tub with several silica gel sachets, closed the lid and put it somewhere dark and cool. I'm not sure if it will work, so I'll be using the more traditional drying method for comparison. If you have any other suggestion for perserving flowers and leaves, do leave a comment.

I've also been writing about the Wheel of the Year at the Moon Books Blog. My posts will eventually be edited into chapters for the Pagan Portals publication. You can find my posts here: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/blogs/moon-books/

You can find out more about my books on my author page at Moon Books or at Amazon.