Dried Potpourri Recipes and Preserving Fresh Cut Flowers

Fresh cut flowers is one of the bonuses of having a flower garden in the spring and summer. Wouldn’t you love to extend that aromatic potpourri fresh flower scent throughout the year? By simply choosing the right flowers and learning methods of drying and preserving fresh cut flowers, you can fill your house with the beauty and fragrance of potpourri all year long.

Growing a Potpourri Recipe in the Garden

A dried potpourri recipe is a fragrant mix of dried fresh flower petals, leaves, whole flowers and spices. It can be simmered in a potpourri burner, sewn into sachets, or displayed in an open bowl. By choosing flowers and herbs that dry well yet maintain their aromatic fragrance when dried, you’ll be on your way to scenting your home with the natural fragrance of last summer’s garden.

Your potpourri mix should include both herbs and flowers from your garden. Select them with an eye toward color and a nose for scent. A potpourri garden might include several (or all!) of the following:

Fragrant Herbs and Flowers for a Potpourri Garden

Lilac this flower is both fragrant and beautiful. To use in dried potpourri recipes, dry the flowerets separately on a drying screen. When used in dried flower arrangements, use silica gel to dry whole flowers.

Lavender another fragrant purple flower, lavender dries well. Hang upside down in bunches in a dark, dry room. Both leaves and flowers carry the fragrance of lavender and can be used in dried potpourri recipes.

Roses are a wonderful and beautiful addition to any potpourri. For fragrance, separate the petals and dry on a drying screen. If you want to include whole rosebuds from your potpourri garden, they’re best dried in silica or another desiccant. Delicate but small rosebuds can be dried on screens as well.

Mint you’ll find an amazing wide variety of mints available, and almost all will add a hint of fresh spice to a potpourri. If you choose to grow mint in a potpourri garden, be sure to ëcageí the roots so that it doesnít take over the entire plot. To dry, either air dry tied bunches, or dry separated leaves on a drying screen.

Lemon Balm This perennial herb carries a light lemony-mint scent which enhances the fragrance of lilacs and roses. Pick the leaves before the plant flowers and dried quickly ñ it’s one of the few herbs that benefits from drying in a low oven on a screen.

Violets Bright colors and sweetly scented, violets preserve their color well through drying. To dry, nip the flower off just at the base of the head, and lay on drying screens in the sun.

Flowers and Herbs for Color in a Dried Potpourri Recipe

Many of the herbs and flowers listed above are brightly colored and fragrant. You’ll find there are some flowers, that can add little to the fragrance of potpourri but dry so pretty that it’s a shame not to include them.

Calendula Bright blue or yellow petals make calendula a wonderful addition to a bowl of potpourri. To use, you can either dry separate petals of the entire flower head on a flower screen.

Pansies A relative of violets, pansies keep their bright color when dried in silica gel. Pansies are a wonderful addition to a potpourri garden ñ besides their appearance. Since they are edible, try them in salads or as candied decorations on a cake. In potpourri, whole-dried flowers or the dried petals make a beautiful accent in any dried potpourri recipe.

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