Pressing Flowers and Leaves This Summer.
Hello friends,
This summer I undertook the process of pressing my own flowers and leaves, with the intention to arrange them in specimen frames.
For years I've seen this done on Instagram and also Pinterest, and I wanted the opportunity to try this myself. I already own a flower press thanks to my husband making me one back in the days when I was pressing and drying leaves and flowers for my New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture, and I've kept the flower press all these years just in case I needed it once again.
So over the summer I wandered around the garden every now and then, picking out flowers and leaves that appealed to me, and then set up my flower press for pressing them.
My flower press is made out of plywood which is sealed with polyurethane, and measures 20 cm wide by 30 cm deep and 10 cm tall, and has 7 sections to press flowers. The flower press is held in place with screws, washers, and wing nuts to apply even pressure over the plywood sheets.
I cut up a large number of newspaper pages to fit the flower press, and got to work laying out the flowers in the sections.
I separated out the flowers and leaves into groups based on what flower and leaf type they were, and also how deep they were, so that similar depth flowers and leaves were pressed together in the same section.
Once the flowers and leaves were separated out, I placed them face down on two pieces of newspaper, making sure the flowers and leaves weren't touching. Two sheets of newspaper were placed on top, and then a plywood board was placed above them to form the next section.
Once all the sections were filled, I placed the last plywood layer on top, and then tightened the screws using the washers and wing nuts to begin pressing the flowers. With all the wing nuts screwed down evenly with the same pressure, the flower press was left in our dry garage for up to two weeks to press and dry the flowers.
When the flower press was finally opened, it was time to remove the flowers and leaves from the paper layers. It can be a little tricky to remove the flowers and leaves without breaking them, but the best method I've found is to pry the paper away from the flowers and leaves (instead of prying the flowers and leaves away from the paper). For more tricky specimens, I used a pair of fine and flat tweezers to slide between the paper and flowers to break the seal.
With the flowers and leaves released from the newspaper, I threw out or recycled the used paper, as sometimes the paper can develop a fungal infection from drying plants, or the paper becomes uneven afterward, making it unsuitable for pressing again. The resulting pressed flowers were laid flat in between tissue paper layers in a cardboard box for storage.
My plan for now is to continue collecting and pressing flowers and leaves, and later on in the year I will begin crafting my specimen frames...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
New Roses Flowering In The Garden
Hello friends,
And welcome to the last blog post of the year. Today I thought I'd share with you the new rose bush varieties flowering in the garden at the moment, that I've been waiting impatiently to flower ever since I planted them last winter (and even early this month in one case...).
First up we have my new 'Cuppa Tea' floribunda rose bred in New Zealand by Bob Matthews, from his popular for picking rose 'Cappuccino'.
I'm so pleased to have purchased this new rose variety this past winter, the muted pink/purple/bronze shading is just so stunning, and is unlike any other rose colour I've ever seen. I can't wait for her to be covered in flowers all throughout the summer.
Next up we have my new climbing rose Azubis. This is the second Azubis rose bush that I have bought this year, the original one was wind blasted during the big North Westerly storm we had in October, and then it slowly died over the weeks afterward, no matter how hard I tried to save it. Luckily, the garden center I purchased it from had one Azubis bush remaining in late October, so I picked it up and planted it straight away into a more sheltered part of the garden. Azubis is a beautiful climber, producing large lilac blue blooms with a huge fragrance.
My Azubis rose bush may be very small at the moment, but she has already flowered once, and her single lilac bloom is huge and smells like heaven. I can't wait for her to grow up and cover our back garden fence in years to come.
And finally we have my newest rose, Chawton Cottage, another climbing rose, bred in England by Harkness Roses, and named for Jane Austen’s House which is now a museum. Chawton Cottage has sensational pearl pink blooms with a distinctive raspberry purple eye. These unique flower clusters are delicately fragrant and fantastic for picking.
I was walking through our local Mitre 10 when Chawton Cottage caught my eye. She was flowering with multiple blooms in early December. Her unusual single flowers with a pearl pink outer flower and a deep raspberry inner, was just stunning, and bees swarmed around her. Before you could blink an eye, I had Chawton Cottage in my arms, and handed over my debit card to the cashier.
I bought her home and wandered around the garden with her until I found the perfect spot for her, up against our trellis fence at the end of the driveway.
I had to do some pruning to get her to fit up against the trellis, and over the coming years I will trail her along and up the fence line to produce a wall of flowers at the end of the driveway.
She just looks so pretty in pearl pink and green and raspberry up against the trellis, adding a lot of joy to a space that has been difficult to garden in over the years.
I hope you enjoyed a look at my new flowering rose varieties from this year. And I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year period, and I'll see you again soon in January 2026...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
Ranunculus And Peonies Flowering
Hello friends,
Today I wanted to share with you some of the ranunculus and peony plants that flowered in the garden this November, bringing such wonderful colour into the garden after the daffodil and tulip flowers finished, but before the dahlias started flowering this summer.
First up are the ranunculus varieties that I grew from seed last autumn. I bought a bunch of imported seeds from Buds & Bloom, including the varieties French Amandine Purple Jean, Italian Rosa Chairo, Italian Rosa, Italian Pastello 1, Italian Pastello 2, and Italian Bianco Sfumato.
Ranunculus corms are almost impossible to import into New Zealand due to strict biosecurity laws, but seed stocks are much easier to get into the country, which is what Buds & Bloom did last summer this year. Ranunculus plants from seeds are pretty tricky to grow, but I managed to get some germinating in autumn, and then grew them up over the winter, before planting them into the ground very early this spring. It didn't take them very long to grow and begin flowering, and here are a few that I photographed.
The range of colours from the imported ranunculus varieties was just stunning, with lots of pastel marshmallow like colours, and the flowers themselves were just very soft and squishy, perfect for cutting and then putting into a vase to enjoy inside the home.
Flowering at the same time were all my unknown peony varieties. Most of them were already in the garden when we moved here in 2019, and a couple of others are peonies that I bought but then have moved a couple of times over the years, and now I can't remember any of their names...
I leave them to flower in the garden rather than bringing them inside our home because hubby and my allergies are too severe to tolerate them, and also we have two very bitey indoor cats (Missy and Rosie) who would love to eat them if the blooms were brought inside.
I also have three new peonies growing this year, Duchesse de Nemours, Dr Alexander Fleming, and Sarah Bernhardt, but it will be a few years before they will be flowering and putting on a show in the garden. I can't wait to see them bud and bloom in a couple of years time...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
November Dahlia Update
Hello friends,
Yes, I did buy more dahlias after I said my garden was completely full and I couldn't fit any more in, but I promise this time I had good reasons to do so...
First of all, I lost a number of dahlias this spring due to tubers rotting/eyes not forming, including:
- Arthur Hambley (DP)
- Cafe Au Lait (DP)
- Islander (DP)
- Muchacha (Dec)
- Salmon Runner (Dec)
- Tranquility (Col)
- Impression Fomoso (Col)
- The Phantom (Ane)
From my observations over the past couple of years, dinner plate dahlias seem more prone to rotting, and for this reason I am not planning on buying anymore dinner plate dahlias in the future, they're just not worth spending all that money on, just to end up rotting in spring.
Secondly, when my NZ Bulbs dahlia order arrived in early October, one of my collarette dahlias, Dark Tiger, was not in the package due to them being out of stock, and they replaced it with the waterlily dahlia, Twiggy. The dahlias in this order weren't in the best condition, and two of them (Tranquility and Impression Fomoso) are actually in the lost dahlias list. They didn't form any eyes at all, and then they rotted. I don't think I'll buy from NZ Bulbs ever again when it comes to dahlias.
Twiggy is a waterlily dahlia with warm pink suffused petals and a light yellow center.
And thirdly, I got rid of our small plastic pond in the back garden. When hubby installed it three years ago, he promised he would take care of it, and keep it clean, and that just didn't happen. So after I cleaned it out this spring (again), I talked with hubby, and he agreed with me that it was time for the pond to go. This freed up a large space in the right part of the back garden, and after some rearranging of dahlias in that area, it gave me more space for dahlias to go into the ground.
And fourthly, during the big North West storm in October my Avalanche camellia snapped off at ground level, and it left an open space in the garden which I could fill with another dahlia.
Luckily this all happened around the time that Bulbs Direct and Mount Mera Botanical restocked their dahlia varieties on their websites, so I bought some dahlias I missed out on earlier in the year, and with discounts too.
From Bulbs Direct I picked up Purple Haze, an anemone dahlia with deep plum-coloured blooms, darker in the centre, and rich dark green foliage.
From Mount Mera Botanical I picked up the following dahlia varieties:
Muchacha a small decorative dahlia with shades of rose pink, violet, and white, to replace the one I lost this spring.
Bacardi, a decorative dahlia with muddy-rose colouring and dark raspberry tips and centers. I lost this dahlia last spring due to it rotting, and I really wanted to replace it.
Platinum Blonde, an anemone dahlia with a fuzzy butter cream center and white petals.
Rockstar, an anemone dahlia with beautiful deep cranberry petals and fuzzy cushion centers.
Take Off, another anemone dahlia with soft, orchid-toned petals which encircle a lighter, fluffy center.
Princess Nadine, a collarette dahlia with double ruff of pink and plum petals and an apricot center.
And lastly, Skyfall, a collarette dahlia with luscious crimson petals and a gold heart.
As soon as these dahlias arrived by courier they all went straight into the ground, and they have already sprouted and begun to grow.
And finally just when I thought all my dahlia buying was done for the year, an opportunity came up that I just couldn't turn down. Emerden Flower Farm had Floret Petite dahlia seedlings for sale, and I couldn't miss out on buying some after I missed out on buying their Floret Petite Dahlia seeds last year. I bought 8 Floret Petite dahlia seedlings, and when they arrived by courier a couple of days later I planted them into a small section of our vegetable garden (bad of me I know, but I was desperate), and gave them a good watering. I'm excited to see what flower types and colours I'll get from them.
With summer fast approaching now, I can't wait to see all these new dahlia varieties flowering in my garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
Social Media
Archives