Best Flowers for Pressing

When January's frigid storms slow the traffic to a standstill, on our country road and the sounds of the occasional "gunshot" snapping of a falling ice-laden tree comes from the mountain, and windswept showers of tree icicles pellet the bow window, threatening to shatter the glass, our thoughts turn to visions of March's first fragrant flats of pansy displays at the garden-centers and the flowers that we could be growing and pressing.

It's possible to capture some of our own personal summer days forever, in the depth of winter's snowdrifts and sleet, by simply drying and pressing some blooms from the warm and sultry seasons.

Artists have been pressing flowers and foliage for a long time and using them for many crafts and hobbies: candlemaking, papermaking, posie greeting card confetti, flower "paintings" under glass, scrapbooking, and even collections numbered and identified for study, or just simply to enjoy looking at later.

Pressed flowers from 100 years ago can sometimes be purchased from online auctions. Pressed the right way and stored in books or under glass, they are a look-back and remembrance from past decades.

A green fern under glass sprouting showers of red verbena, white star, and sky-blue lobelia can help lift a log-cabin fever.

Choosing Flowers to Press:

March is too early here for porch or garden flowers so we house them in the cold-frame while our mountain slowly warms to a real spring and the potted beauties can survive on their own outside.

Pansies, violas and tri-color Johnny-Jump-Ups are some of the easiest flowers to press and among the first appearing in garden centers. They keep their vivid and brilliant colors well and being flat they need very little "finger-pressing" before arranging them on their pressing papers.

Daily spring walks to discover new green growth might bring some unusual and great treasures to press. Infant tree and yard-shrub leaves are pressables. The first burgundy and scarlet-edged, one-inch baby oak and maple leaves to pop out are more beautiful even than their later fall shades of gold and scarlet. They dry to almost unbelievably colorful hues, and some maples press to a translucent fragile-looking leaf that can easily be used as greenery in "bouquet pictures." Use them trailing along the cream-colored mounting on the children's and grandchildren's baby pictures.

Preserved flowers and foliage keep for a very long time and provide years and even generations of enjoyment. So let's press some flowers.