Читать книгу Down to the River and Up to the Trees: Discover the hidden nature on your doorstep - Sue Belfrage - Страница 25

While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, I came across a copy of The Language of Flowers or Flora Symbolica from 1887. I bought it and took it home, where I discovered scores of dried flowers and leaves pressed within its pages like antique bookmarks. Wonderful to think they might have survived for more than 130 years.

To dry your own flowers, ferns and leaves, pick them fresh in the morning once the dew has evaporated. (Please don’t pull up any wild flowers by the roots, or pick any endangered plants.) Flowers with flat faces such as violets work well, as do buttercups, daisies and wild grasses.

Place the freshly picked flowers between two sheets of white paper and put this inside a heavy book, such as a dictionary. Moisture from the flowers might make the pages wrinkle, so use a book you don’t mind damaging and, if drying multiple flowers, space them out inside. Close the book and put a weight or a pile of other books on top to keep the pages flat. Then leave this in a dry, cool place for a couple of weeks.

You could use them in a bespoke bookmark or a card along with a note of when and where you picked them.