Sustainability & Preserved Flowers

If you have been lucky enough to attend one of our dried flower courses you will know that we only work with naturally dried flowers. A lot of those we dry ourselves in the studio. ⁠

So, why not preserved? The main reason is chemicals. Naturally drying flowers takes time – it requires the flowers to be hung upside down for at least a week or two until they can be worked with. Preserving flowers speeds up that process and also allows the end look of the flowers to be controlled. ⁠

In short, the process of preserving includes bleaching the flower to remove all the colour. Then there’s preserving solution, humectants, solvents, fungicides, sometimes fragrance and then often dye. ⁠⁠

The impact of regular exposure to such chemicals is not quite known as yet, let alone the impacts of preserved flowers ending up in green waste.