Harvesting For Herbal Bouquets & Craft Project
© Wystira Moonsinger, August, 2007
You can harvest herbs for making herbal bouquets from many sources. These include your own herbal garden, open fields, forests, woods, along roadsides, besides streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. The bounty of Mother Earth is endless in that She provides us mere humans with such a variety of herbs to choose from.
You can collect flowering branches, pine cones, intersting shaped leaves, wild flowers, pine needles, bark, bird's nests, seed pods, etc. from all over. Even leaves can add a beautiful, fragrent touch to your homemade herbal bouquets.
When wild harvesting make sure that you wear suitable clothing such as long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, etc to protect you when out looking for your herbal supplies.
Your personal garden offers flowers and foilage & other plant material to decorate your herbal bouquet. I'd suggest collecting in the early morning or early evening hours. The hot sun stresses out plants and they usually look limp and distressed. And herbs picked during the cooler hours of the day usually last longer.
After harvesting your plant material, quickly put the material in luke-warm water to preserve them and to prevent the cut site from healing over.
Make sure that when harvesting that you have a pair of sharp scissors or sharp pruners so that you make a clean cut on the plant which will help it to heal quickly and to provide you with more of its bounty in the future.
While harvesting, make sure that you have some kind of idea of what your herbal bouquet design is so that you can harvest the appropriate plant material. For a first project, I'd suggest sticking with a single color and then as you become more adept at designing your bouquet, get experimental.
Make sure that you have a variety of plant material...( i.e. moss, twigs, flowers, etc) to display and I'm sure that you'll see a beautiful bouquet after you're through putting it together.
An Easy First Project:
Garden Hat
By Emelie Tolley & Chirs Mead
(adapted by Wystira Moonsinger)
Materials:
Straw Hat (any size will do, but find one that suits your taste)
Ribbon (long enough to encircle the crown of the hat)
Straight pins
Needle
Thread to match the ribbon
Dried flowers & foilage
Glue gun
Hair Spray
Insturctions:
~Choose a ribbon whose color complements the flowers that you've chosen and whose width is compatible with the brim of the hat. You don't want to overpower the hat, just make it look lovely and fun. The slantier the crown of the hat, the narrower the robbin should be.
~Wrap the ribbon around the crown of the hat, overlapping the ends slightly. Hold the ribbon in place with the pins. Carefully tack the ribbon to the crown in several places to secure it and to hold the ends in place.
~Arrange the flowers, one by one, on the brim. Starting at the center and on the base layer next to the hat, glue the flowers in place. If necessary, hold them in place till the glue dries.
~Coat the flowers lightly with the hair spray to protect them from reabsorbing moisture.
This is a very simple project and one that you can do with your children. Get a straw hat for them and let them experiement and have fun too. |
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