How I dry Hydrangeas

There has been a request fro information on how to dry Hydrangea blooms. This is a picture of one of my Hydrangea bushes, which has given me variations of colors from pink and purple to blue. How beautiful this is this year! This originally was a potted plant from Briggs that I got for the cemetery, and wisely decided to bring home shortly after the holiday for which it was purchased. It and several others have been planted around the front with varying degrees of success. Two of them, which many of you have been enjoying throughout the season have been just splendid this year, while three others are in very overgrown areas, and have not produced any blooms. I will be removing all the plants crowding them out in the next few weeks to prepare for a better opportunity for them to become shining starts next week. This is one of the blooms from my white Hydrangea, Paniculata Grandiflora, Peegee, which I obtained from the old State Police Headquarters site across the street 22 years ago. From one overgrown, tired out old plant I now have it in four areas of the garden where it has become so overgrown, I have already given out about two dozen shoots, in one area alone. These blooms become massive as the plant ages, with a beautiful spring show of greenish blooms changing to white as the season progresses. If you pick them before they turn brownish, you can just put them in a vase and they will dry just as they are. For the blue and pink varieties, you need to pick them just before they start to lose their color. I have several I picked last year that still retain a lot of their original color. Of course, if you want stems, you have to sacrifice part of the plant to cut the stems with the bloom. As I have been trying to let these plants stay as they are, I have only taken the blooms with not much stem. This plant has all the original blooms on it, as I did not pick any to dry out this year.