Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers [Hardcover]

Cathy Miller (Author), Rob Gray (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1997

For the millions of flower lovers who don't have the luxury of decorating with fresh blooms every week, Cathy Miller's Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers offers the perfect solution: an inexpensive, expressive way to create warmth and beauty year-round.

Featuring more than fifty floral "recipes." All illustrated with brilliant full-color photographs by Rob Gray, Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers is the most comprehensive, contemporary, and practical book on the subject. By mixing such popular favorites as carnations and marigolds with more exotic flora like cattails and eucalyptus leaves, and by incorporating a wide range of organic elements--fruits, grasses and weeds, seasonal ornaments, even found objects--Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers celebrates the full extent of nature's bounty.

Drawing from her twenty-plus years of expertise in the art and craft of drying flowers, using the most up-to-date methods--including microwaving and glycerinization--and aided by an assortment of household products, Cathy Miller shows readers how to create fabulous arrangements that last for years. The preserved roses, delphiniums, peonies, and other blooms that beckon from the pages of Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers look as if they were just plucked from the soil.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cameron Shaw is a professional dried- flower design business founded by British entrepreneur Russell Longmuir. The projects in this book are tightly crafted topiaries and potted bunches of flowers similar to those treated in Carol Endler Sterbenz's The Complete Book of Dried Flower Topiaries (LJ 11/1/95). Use of one plant type in a simple container is the key to these very elegant arrangements. Miller, on the other hand, harvests the flowers from her upstate New York farm for lavish sprays and pots brimming with mixed blossoms and leaves. About half of her book is devoted to up-to-date methods for drying flowers such as microwaving and glycerinization. She provides an extensive drying chart that includes trees as well as the northern garden flowers grown in New York. Each book takes a very different approach to dried-flower arrangements, and both are suitable for craft and garden collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

With petals so delicate and vibrantly colored they look as if they were just plucked from the soil, preserved roses, delphiniums, peonies, and other blooms beckon from the pages of Cathy Miller's Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers. Drawing form her twenty-plus years of expertise in the art and craft of drying flowers, using the most up-to-date methods--including microwaving and glyceriniation--and aided by an assortment of household products, Miller shows readers how to create fabulous arrangements that last for years.

Featuring more than fifty floral "recipes," all illustrated with brilliant full-color photographs by Rob Gray, Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers is the most comprehensive, contemporary, and practical book on the subject. By mixing such popular favorites as carnations and marigolds with more exotic flora like cattails and eucalyptus leaves, and by incorporating a wide range of organic elements--fruits, grasses and weeds, seasonal ornaments, even found objects--Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers celebrates the full extent of nature' s bounty. First discussing the basics, Miller explains how to grow flowers, including staggered schedules for blooming and the best times to cut, pinpointed to the hour. She follows with detailed instructions for preservation and storage, outlining optimum drying conditions for more than 120 varieties of flowers in a specifically designed chart. In the process, she offers charming bits of homespun wisdom and shares the secrets that have earned her invitations to create dried floral arrangements for the past four Presidential administrations.

For the millions of flower lovers who don't have the luxury of decorating with fresh blooms every week, Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers presents the perfect solution: an inexpensive, expressive way to create warmth and beauty year-round.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Artisan (January 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885183518
• ISBN-13: 978-1885183514
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book and informative!, February 21, 1999

By 

Jane Ellen Clark (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers (Hardcover)

This book is great for a beginner. I went to the library to find a book that would tell me how to dry my valentine roses. I so thourghly enjoyed this book I am going to buy it for myself as well as for others as a gift. Not only does it tell you how to dry flowers, but it demonstrates step by step how to grow them, and different ways to arrange them. It has beautiful pictures in it with arrangements from elegant, country to modern - something for everyone. I highly recommend it. It makes a lovely tabletop book as well as a reference book. The author Cathy Miller has designed flower arrangements for presidents throughout the years, even for President Clinton who has allergies. Cathy has designed the flower arrangements for him encased in glass!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good information on drying plants, July 13, 2006

By 

Janicez (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers (Hardcover)

Excellent detailed information on many different ways to dry flowers including charts on how long flowers take to dry in different methods and which methods should be used for which plants. This takes up about half the book and is very useful for those frustrated with the few miserable pages that most books give on drying.
The rest of the book is taken up with a variety of flower displays for different styles and seasons. Instructions are given but they are fairly basic such as "add hydrangea from front and center' For a beginner these instructions may not be sufficient to achieve the results show without a lot of perseverance. The Majority of the photographs are good, helpful and easy to use as guides. A few however concentrate more on the scene than the display making it difficult to duplicate. Overall it's a very good book.
My major complaint about this book is the mixing of displays and instructions into the chapters on drying rather than concentrating them in one section of the book. It means you have to keep paging through to find what you want rather than just looking in one section.

9 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful and informative..., August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Harvesting, Preserving & Arranging Dried Flowers (Hardcover)

Great book full of info and ideas, worth your time and money