As part of my lecture series, I do a workshop involving pressed flowers/foliage . …..ALOT of pressed flowers /foliage. To meet the demands of  the many workshops, I  press non-stop from early spring right through summer and fall. I always  leave a pile of heavy books and paper right on the chest in the dining room in plain sight, so I can snip a few things whenever I am out in the garden and press them when I come back in the house.

Whatever goes in between the papers and books gets shuffled around , in and out of the stack  ,until I am sure they are flat and very dry. Moisture is enemy #1 to pressed flora and I let the papers alternately get pressed and air dried until I am 100 percent positive  they are dry enough to get moved to the large presses downstairs. Any wet plant material can cause mold which will ruin the flowers for print making….like the geranium below

In our utility room I have several large pieces of plywood and old shelving that get “pressed” into service (tee-hee) to keep the accumulated material flat and dry. They are all stacked together and either weighted down or pulled together with ratcheting bungee cords until the stuff is needed.

In the interest of helping both past and future workshop participants, I am going to try to keep a log of what I am pressing as the season goes by. We will see how that goes, but here is the start of the season anyway….

For the first time this year I pressed squill (scilla siberica) , which I discovered upon picking has the most delightful scent. I have shoved it under everyone’s nose in my household trying to get an accurate description of what it smells like, to no avail. Let me just tell you it is wonderful and sweet, and if I had not picked it to press I would have gone my whole life without knowing ….for shame. Anyway , here is what it looks like

I let artemesia (both silver king and lemon lime) run rampant through my perennial borders. they are very shallow rooted and it is easy to pull what you don’t want, and both varieties make a great foil for lots of flowering plants. Anything  with silver foliage looks super pressed, so at this time when I am pulling stray artemesia willy-nilly, I put it in the stack of books where it presses easily and without worry of extra moisture.

Pansies ( and other viola spcs)are a no-brainer, almost everyone I talk to tells me of a faded pansy arrangement in a frame from their grandma or mom. I love the jonnny jump ups, they look very sweet pressed and arranged in little rows like soldiers. The newer ruffly varieties, although beautiful, press pretty wavy and I am not such a big fan.

Crab apple trees offer tons of pretty blooms and colorful young foliage as well.

Heuchera is one of my favorite things to press, and at this time I am cutting the older larger leaves off the ones that persisted through the winter and pressing them in their winter color phase. ( many are bronzy in late fall and winter and various shades of green on the growing season.)

Rounding out the list for early spring are geum, emerging yarrow foliage, and the plant I press year round ….scented geraniums I grow in the house that flower off and on and generously donate all their lovely blooms to my zealous pressing.

In the coming weeks I will start to look for foliage of all kinds as everything starts to grow. Lots of plants have brightly colored emerging leaves (spirea, jacobs ladder, just about any shrub you can think of, and maple trees) and they are well suited to my purposes when they are smaller as well.

and so it begins………