How to dry hydrangeas two ways

With the dry flower trend that resurfaced (hello 1976) I figured I'd try my hands on drying some myself. Namely hydrangeas. And specifically smooth hydrangeas (Hydrangea Arbroescens). Why those? Because I have two huge bushes right outside my apartment. Am I allowed to cut those? Probably not. But they’ve been so abundant and pretty much begged me to relieve them from some of the blooms so I had no choice. Eh.

Anyway.

I did some research (asked on Instagram) and the two methods that were mentioned most often were:

1) Drying in water

2) Drying hanging upside down

So I decided to try both.

Drying in water

This was the method I was most interested in trying. It kind of didn’t make any sense to me. You basically pop the stems in a vase with water and leave them in there until the water has dried up completely. If the blooms are not dry at that point, refill with more water. The blooms will dry standing in the vase.

I tried this twice.

My first attempt was putting some stems in water July 15th in the apartment.

One bloom dried up faster than the rest, after about two weeks. It felt a bit like watching paint dry so after a couple of weeks I put the vase with water still in it in my windowless storage room in the basement and left it to finish down there in the dark.

The result. Exhibit A. Not great. The blooms turned yellow and frazzled and fell apart very easily.

My second attempt wasn’t really an attempt. It just happened. I couldn't keep my fingers off those blooms outside my kitchen window. This was later in August. Again I put them in a vase with water and they looked so pretty for so long so I didn’t even realize that the drying process had taken place!

The result. Exhibit B. Pretty! These blooms are greener, the petals are more intact and stay on the stem. Success!

Oh, I should point out that several people said to remove the leaves but I wanted to keep them. Not sure if that affected the results. What I do think affected the result was doing it later in the season. Might be wrong but that’s the feeling I got.

Drying hanging upside down

In July, I also decided to try the other method, hanging the blooms upside down to dry.

This method made way more sense to me and I’ve occasionally dried other flowers, grasses and herbs that way so I felt pretty confident.

I snipped some more, and hung them over a string. I prepped it in the kitchen and then snuck my garland down the stairs into my storage room, hoping I wouldn’t meet any of my neighbors. Luckily I didn’t and again left the blooms there in the dark.

They were pretty much just left hanging but as I popped in there occasionally to pick up tools and drop things off I noticed that they dried pretty quickly.

The result. Exhibit C. Not bad. I liked that the leaves were pointing up with this method and the petals were pretty intact. Again, I think waiting until later in the season might have yielded a better result?

The best method

So, which of the methods would I recommend?

To be honest it depends on how long you want to wait for the dried blooms. The drying in water method worked well the second time around, but did take longer than hanging them upside down. I did enjoy the color of the second batch of water dried ones though so my personal favorite is Exhibit B.

Oh, also the variety of hydrangea I had on hand my vary from other ones. Do share if you have a different experience with another kind!