Drying Roses: Possibilities and Tips

We don’t want to throw away a pretty bouquet of roses just like that. We can dry roses and decorate our four walls with them. What we have to take care of, you’ll find out here.

Any type of rose is suitable for drying. The shrub rose “Rhapsody in Blue”, the Portland rose “Rose de Resht” and the bed rose “Sunlight Romaktika” belong to the particularly good smelling ones.

Drying roses: Air drying

• The rose blossoms should already be slightly open for the drying process to take place correctly. The stems should be trimmed slightly and placed in a water-glycerine mixture (1:1 ratio). The whole thing should stand in it for one or two days. With glycerine we can conserve the roses.
• The single rose or bouquet (of about 8-10 flowers tied together with a rubber band) should be hung upside down in a dry, airy and dark place and left to air-dry.
• The darker the room, the better the colour of the rose petals is preserved.
• The drying of the roses takes about one to two weeks.
• To make the dried flowers last longer and prevent them from crumbling, we can spray them with hairspray or clear lacquer. If dust settles on the flowers, we can carefully blow-dry them.

Drying roses with silica gel or salt

If we dry the flowers in the air (without the addition of glycerine) this will cause the colour of the roses to fade. But there is also a trick for this.

• We need a large container that we can seal airtight.
• Fill the bottom with silica gel (available in the craft shop) or salt and place the roses side by side.
• We fill the cavities with silica gel or salt until the flower is covered.
• Drying takes about two to three weeks.
• We then apply hair lacquer to the dried flowers to preserve them.