Tips for looking after your dried flowers, including choosing a location, how to clean them and what to do if they start to droop.

Strawflowers (Helichrysum bracteatum in most seed catalogues) are my favorite flowers to grow for drying because of their stunning, long-lasting colours and their cheerful daisy shapes. Overall, they’re pretty straightforward to dry but they can still be susceptible to mould so I wanted to share my tips for how to dry and store them - both full flowers and flower heads only.

With the arrival of autumn, I start thinking about preparing the garden for winter, most importantly ensuring the soil is protected. Here in the UK we usually have rainy, cold winters. Covering bare soil with a mulch or growing an overwintering crop helps prevent erosion and loss of nutrients by either insulating the soil from the elements or holding the soil in place through root growth.

It’s seed-sowing time so I thought I’d share my tips for successful seed germination. After a few years of trial and error with seed sowing, I’m getting excellent germination for almost all of my seeds. Here are the main things to consider when starting your seeds indoors…

Some seeds are always better off started in modules or individual pots, but we’re often advised to sow most flowers in seed trays and then ‘prick out’ seedlings to transfer into separate modules to grow on. I’ve struggled with seedling loss after pricking out and wanted to share what I’ve done to avoid this problem in case it’s helpful for anyone else.

A lovely day was spent decorating tables with locally-grown flowers and chatting with couples about their upcoming wedding plans at the Pauntley Court open day. Here's how I decorated my table with everlasting flowers.

Here’s a little update on our small wildlife pond. We built the pond in March-April 2020 so it’s now going into its fourth year. It’s been a great addition to our garden, and I love visiting to observe the wildlife activity or to do a bit of weeding nearby.

Lots of perennial flowers dry really well, but here are six to get started with that will give you a variety of shapes, textures and colours.

Today I’m sharing five easy-to-dry flowers. These are great to start with if you’re new to flower drying, and they’re all annuals which means you can go from seed to dried flower in one growing season.

Last month I took my dried flowers to London to participate in the fourth annual Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival. It was a fantastic learning experience for me and really inspiring to see so much imagination on display.

A bee invited me in for a closer look at strawflowers.

I love the look of crinkly dried Rudbeckia flowers … here’s how I dry them to use in everlasting flower arrangements.

This week I wanted to share how I made our small wildlife pond last spring.

An old fish pond transformed into a wildlife haven

Having fun with pumpkins and flowers

A new hand-painted backdrop for my floral photography

A hand-tied bouquet of pink September flowers

I share photos of a small August flower arrangement with found glass ‘treasures’ from the garden.

Winter turns into spring. Here’s what’s been happening in the garden this March.