Get perfectly-dried hydrangea blooms every time with this easy step-by-step guide on how to dry hydrangeas. It’s easier than you think.
Chances are that if you love hydrangeas, then you really love hydrangeas. They’re definitely one flower that has a lot of really die-hard fans and I count myself as one of them! If you love them too, then maybe at one point you came to the realization that you could just dry your blooms from your favorite hydrangea plant outside and then you’d be able to enjoy them inside for as long as you like! But first you need to know how to dry hydrangeas the right way so they actually look as good as you imagined.
Dried hydrangeas look amazing inside the home in fall displays and can even be used in Christmas decorating too. And then after Christmas, when you’re ready to start dreaming of Summer flowers again, they’re perfect in a vase on your table. And they never need watering or any special care!
The problem comes when you try to dry some hydrangeas of your own and you realize that it’s not quite as easy as it seems. They have a tendency to wilt and curl and flop and just generally turn to unusable mush. I know mine did for a long time and I could never figure out what in the world I was doing wrong!
I was actually extra frustrated because I had dried some hydrangeas perfectly a few years ago and I could never figure out why those worked so well, while others totally failed.
It’s a small victory, but I’m so glad to have solved this mystery. So here’s what you have to do!
How to Dry Hydrangeas
First, look at your calendar. Is it before August? Then I’m sorry, but drying your hydrangeas is just going to be more trouble than it’s worth.
You see….
It turns out that drying hydrangeas successfully depends more on when the hydrangeas are ready to be dried, rather than one when you’re ready to dry them.
It’s so zen, isn’t it?
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Timing is Everything
The best thing to do is to wait for the flowers to start to dry naturally on their plant before you start trying to force them to dry. Depending on your growing season, this will happen somewhere between August and October. I picked these at the end of August one year and the whole thing couldn’t have been easier. Once the flowers started to dry naturally and I saw a few flowers turning juuuuuust a bit brown, I clipped them and put them up on a shelf to dry for about 2 days.
Then they were dried and I stuck them in a vase.
And that’s it!
If you’ve ever been frustrated by wilty flowers like I have, you’re probably as stunned as I was that it could be so easy.
But it is!
And now you know how to dry hydrangeas! Happy hydrangea drying!
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