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Curriculum Connections
Dried
Flower Creations
Potpourri
Flowers
and herbs, long appreciated for their beauty, symbolism, and medicinal
uses, have also been employed to conceal offensive odors! In 18th
century Europe and colonial America, fresh water and refrigeration
were at a premium, sewers were often open, and horses wandered through
streets. Crushed dried flowers, herbs, and spices were strewn on floors,
kept in dressers to keep insects from clothing, and used to deodorize
streets and people alike.
Although we don't rely on the fresh aromas of flowers today
to make our lives, well, bearable, fragrant mixtures of leaves and
petals from dried flowers and/or herbs — called potpourri
— make great gifts and products
for fundraisers. Here are some guidelines for making potpourri. Encourage
your students to invent their own custom mixtures and packaging.
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Gather and
dry petals from a variety of aromatic flowers and from blooms that
simply look good. Consider
extending your harvest by asking florists and supermarkets for donations
of old flowers.
If your potpourri product will
be visible (e.g., in a basket or clear cellophane), you may want
to leave petals whole. However, if you're creating enclosed sachets
(in the form of small muslin bags or pillows, for instance), you
can crush your ingredients. Think
about using other ingredients for nose and eye appeal such as cinnamon
sticks, dried berries, and scented oils.
Here
are some other suggestions:
| Potpourri
materials that smell good |
Potpourri
materials that look good |
| roses,
peonies, lavender, scented geranium leaves, rosemary, thyme,
orange and lemon peels, vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks,
cloves, star anise |
black-eyed
susan flowers, marigolds, bachelor's buttons, lamb's ear
leaves, money plant, statice flowers, dried berries |
Note: If you want to try an old remedy for protecting clothing
in dressers from insects, fill sachets with a mixture of lavender,
rosemary, and southernwood (a type of artemesia).
- Have students
blend their unique ingredients in a bowl and adjust
the mixture as they see fit. Consider
adding "orris root," a fixative that will help the potpourri
keep its color and fragrance longer. It is available at most pharmacies
in small quantities, but it should be handled with care because it
can cause allergic reactions. Students should use utensils when stirring
or handling a mixture containing this ingredient.
- Store potpourri
in closed glass jars until you want to use it. Here are some thoughts
on products students can create to give as gifts or sell to raise
funds:
• Find or make and decorate small baskets or bowls and fill them
with potpourri to sweeten the air.
• Put an aromatic mixture in jars and decorate the lids with
fabric or tissue paper tied with ribbon.
• Cut 1-foot-square pieces of muslin or decorative fabric, fill
them with potpourri, and tie them with ribbon. Another option is to
make small pillows from fabric squares and fill them with your mixture
before stitching the last side. Either can be used to sweeten clothing
drawers.
Dried
Arrangements and More
Once your students have collected and dried blooms from the garden
and wild, there's no end to the products they can create. We
hope these few ideas inspire their creative juices.
 Dried
arrangements
— Your class might start simply
and create dried bouquets (including seedheads and pods) by binding
stems together with florists' tape or wrapping them in tissue paper.
You can also make creative arrangements in recycled planters, baskets,
and other containers. Try putting floral foam (found at craft stores)
or a similar substance into the bottom of containers so stems will
remain where they're placed.
Hanging
wall pockets — For this project, you'll need to create, buy,
or get donations of small baskets or pockets that can be hung, and
then decorate them with paint, ribbon, or other materials. Next, arrange
flowers in containers by sticking them into floral foam that you've
placed in the bottom.
Free-form
swags
— To create this type of wall art,
use a length of straight wire as a base and attach dried flowers and
greenery to it. Make small bundles of different types of flowers and
attach them to the base by wrapping florists' tape or a lighter piece
of wire around the stems and base. Once the materials are attached,
you can bend the wire to a desired shape, such as an "s"
or semi-circle. Consider adding colorful ribbons to the ends.
Dried-flower
wreaths
— You'll
need some type of base material to make a wreath. Craft stores carry
styrofoam and other types of pre-formed bases, but students can make
their own from natural materials such as braided grapevines or straw.
To make a base from straw, first form a circle with heavy, stiff wire
and twist the ends together. Next, attach a lighter wire and secure
the straw to the circular base by wrapping the wire around it.
If you have leafy plants in abundance, such as artemesia, sage, or
Spanish moss, you can use those to cover the base and add spots of
colorful flowers to that. Another option is to fill the entire wreath
with a variety of blooms. You can insert flowers and other wreath
materials into the base or attach them with a hot glue gun. If you're
no using a glue gun, it may be easiest to insert the stems at an angle
and maintain that angle around the whole wreath.
 Budding
Science Investigations
There's more than one way to dry a flower and lots of variables —
humidity, temperature, air flow, flower type, and so on — that
can affect the final product. As your students set out to preserve
their precious blooms, challenge them to research and test a variety
of strategies, experiment with different factors, and otherwise explore
questions that intrigue them. Consider the following sample questions:
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How
do ___ flowers that were dried in silica and sand compare with the
same types dried in a sand-borax mixture? (Or how do air-dried flowers
compare with those dried with a dessicant?)
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What
factors seem to affect how long it takes flowers to dry?
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How
can we speed up the drying process when we hang flowers? (Using
a fan to circulate air helps pull out moisture. Certain flowers,
such as delphiniums, actually keep their color better if they're
dried quickly near sources of warm air, such as a heater, while
other do best without high heat.)
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If
we try to save space by making alternating layers of flowers and
silica gel, will that affect the time it takes to dry or the quality
of the flowers?
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What's
the best way to dry marigolds?
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Can
we successfully dry flowers in kitty litter? A mixture of kitty
litter and sawdust? What other substances might draw out moisture?
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What
will happen to sicila gel if we leave it open to the air? To cold
air versus hot air? (Students can explore the relationship between
humidity and temperature.)
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Can
we change the ratio of ingredients in a sand-borax-salt mix to speed
up the drying process?
Did
you know?
Freshly cut flowers will eventually fade if left in the light
because a chemical reaction requiring water and light breaks
down the pigment. If a fresh flower is left in the dark, the
reaction can't happen. However, once you have successfully
removed water from the flower (that is, dried it) it can linger
in the light without fading. If you do notice a dried flower
fading, it has likely reabsorbed some moisture from the air,
which has reacted with light and drained the pigment. |
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How
do different drying conditions and agents affect specific flower
colors?
(In general, the faster a flower dries, the more color is retained.
Reds typically turn more purple or bluish, magenta turns to lavender,
and yellow and orange flowers tend to hang onto their hues. Flowers
typically darken when they dry. This happens because the pigment
is more concentrated as water evaporates and because of the oxidation
reaction with air.)
As groups plan
investigations, help them consider the "steps" they'll take in terms
that help them think through the problem. Some of the questions to
ponder throughout the process are: What do we want to find out
about ____? How can we make the best observations? What do we already
think we know or have we observed about ____? What is the best way
to answer our questions? What types of data will we need? How can
we make it a "fair" test? What types of observations or measurements
should we take? How can we organize and communicate the data and results
to present the clearest answer or strongest explanation? They
can then mirror what scientists do by presenting their plans to peers,
who give feedback on the experimental setups.
 Explore
the Language of Flowers
They have long inspired humans with their beauty and fragrances and
we've bestowed them with symbolic meanings.
During the Victorian England in the 1800s, flowers so inspired certain
classes of society, that a language, of sorts, was developed in which
elaborate meanings were attributed to specific flowers. Blossoms worn
in hair and on clothing, or given as gifts alone or in combination,
had better be carefully chosen; they could convey a variety of positive
and negative statements and emotions. These messages were particularly
important in love and romance. Entire dictionaries were even created
to help people both encode and decode floral messages! Here are a
few examples of floral meanings:
baby's breath = innocence, carnation (pink) = I'll never
forget you, carnation (purple) = capriciousness, oleander
= caution,
mock orange = deceit,
zinnia = goodness
Consider inviting your students to explore the language of flowers
by discovering some of their meanings (see the Web site link on the
Resources page)
and musing about how these may have come about. (Is it apparent from
observing a flower's structure and features?) Then, let students create
their own small bouquets (sometimes called nosegays) to convey messages.
You might follow up with a brainstorm and discussion of ways in which
our language today reflects flower, vegetable, and other plant symbolism.
Consider the meanings and possible origins of phrases such as these:
a shrinking violet, cool as a cucumber, strong as an oak.
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National Gardening Association
Growing Ideas Classroom Projects is a benefit for NGA's Members
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