Drying flowers is a perfect way to continue enjoying your favorite blooms indoors or used in decorative arrangements as gifts or as attractive accents for your home. Although many flowers do dry well, keep in mind that the drying process often will highlight the flaws in flowers, so by choosing the best flowers for drying, your chances for producing beautifully dried flowers are much higher.

Always be sure to handle the flowers you choose to dry very carefully, and always have an area set aside in your home just for the drying process so your flowers won’t be crushed, jostled or become easily damaged. Also, keep any flowers you dry out of direct sunlight. Here are some suggestions of specimens that tolerate drying the best.

Goldenrod

A hardy medicinal plant that has small golden blooms produced on long stems.

Baby’s Breath

A popular flower for wreaths and bouquets, this produces delicate white flowers which create lacy-looking sprays on tall stems.

Statice

Pretty bell-shaped flowers that grow in tight clusters, in colors such as red, purple, pink and white.

Yarrow

This plant makes a lovely addition to any dried flower arrangement because of its lacy-looking flowers in a range of colors including white, red and pink.

Globe Thistle

This stunning plant produces purple thistle heads which make a wonderful accent to any bouquet.

Sweet Annie

Another hardy plant that features a gorgeous lace of green foliage that resembles feathers, giving any dried arrangement incredible texture.

Lavender

In addition to its amazing scent, this striking purple flower is a favorite for air drying.

Cockscomb

This plant derives its name from its appearance, which closely resembles the dramatic reddish-purple comb of a rooster.

Whether air-dried or dried in a desiccant, all of the above flowers successfully tolerate the drying process with relative ease. They retain their color well after drying, making them fantastic choices for vivid, colorful arrangements of any kind. Please re

Also, always keep any flowers you dry, whether in a vase or as an addition to a decorative arrangement, out of direct sunlight to prevent fading and loss of scent. Lastly, don’t forget to save the seeds from the flowers you choose to dry so you can replant them again the following season.