Harriet Pemberton
By late July the cottage garden has reached that generous, slightly unruly stage where the lavender is humming with bees, the mint is making a bid for the path, and every windowsill is cluttered with jam jars of flowers. It is a lovely problem to have, and drying is the oldest answer to it. A few bunches strung up now will give you scent and colour in February, when the borders are doing nothing much at all.
Choosing What Actually Dries Well
Not everything deserves the shelf space. Soft, watery herbs such as basil, chives, chervil, dill and parsley lose most of their character when dried — they turn to dusty hay. Use those fresh, or freeze them chopped in ice cube trays. The reliable candidates are the woody, resinous ones:
- Rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sage and winter savory — the backbone of any drying basket
- Bay — pick whole leaves, they keep for years and improve in storage
- Mint and lemon balm — dry quickly and in small bunches, they go brown if crowded
- Lavender and chamomile — for teas, sleep pillows and drawer sachets
Among the flowers, the best are those with a papery or stiff quality: calendula, cornflower, nigella, yarrow, statice, strawflower, hydrangea and the older, tighter-petalled roses. Sweet peas and most large blooms are disappointing — they fade to a sad grey. If you are unsure, dry a single stem as a test before committing a whole harvest.
Cutting at the Right Moment
Timing matters more than technique. Herbs are most aromatic just before they flower, when the essential oils sit concentrated in the leaves. Once the plant bolts, the flavour goes into the flower and the foliage turns bitter. Cut mid-morning, after the dew has lifted but before the sun has had hours to bake the oils out of the leaves.
Flowers want picking when they are freshly opened rather than fully blown. Use sharp secateurs and take stems about 15–20cm long, cutting just above a leaf joint. Work around the garden rather than stripping one plant bare — this keeps the shape of the border and leaves plenty behind. And do leave some: seedheads feed goldfinches and sparrows through the winter, and the last of the lavender is a lifeline for late bees.
Setting Up a Dark, Airy Room
This is where most drying goes wrong. The golden rule is dark, dry and moving air. Light bleaches colour; still, damp air invites mould. A north-facing spare bedroom with the curtain drawn, a cool pantry or a loft with a window cracked open will all serve beautifully. Kitchens and bathrooms are the two worst places in the house — steam and cooking fat undo everything.
Aim for a room around 15–24°C with low humidity. Open a window on dry, still days to change the air. A small fan set on its lowest speed across the room — not pointed at the bunches — is helpful in a muggy spell. If you can only offer a bright room, hang a sheet of muslin or an old net curtain over the window.
Hanging Your Bunches
Tie stems in bunches no thicker than your wrist, and for soft herbs like mint or lemon balm, no thicker than a 50p piece. Strip the lower leaves so air can circulate around the stems, then secure with garden twine or, better still, an elastic band — stems shrink as they dry and string slackens.
Hang them upside down from a clothes airer, a beam, a hook, or a line strung across the room, spacing bunches about 10cm apart. For seedy things such as dill, coriander and nigella, slip a paper bag with a few holes punched in it over the bunch; it catches the seed and keeps the dust off.
Expect soft herbs to be ready in 7–10 days, rosemary, thyme and bay in two to three weeks, lavender in a fortnight, and hydrangeas in three to four. The test is simple: a stem should snap cleanly. If it bends, it is not done — leave it another few days.
Flowers for Decoration, and Drying Flat
For blooms you want to keep their shape — pansies, cornflowers, small roses — lay them flat between sheets of blotting paper or newspaper and weigh them down with a couple of heavy books for two to three weeks. Hydrangeas are the exception to hanging: pick them when the petals feel papery, stand the stems in a jar with just an inch of water, and let the water evaporate away over a few weeks. They will hold their colour far better this way than hung upside down.
Storing and Using Your Harvest
Once bone dry, strip the leaves from the stems but keep them whole — crushing them now releases the oils you have spent a fortnight preserving. Store in airtight jars in a dark cupboard, labelled with the name and the date. Whole dried leaves keep their best scent for about a year; dried flowers for two or three.
In the kitchen, thyme, oregano, rosemary and bay want adding early to stews and casseroles so they have time to soften and release. Mint, lemon balm and chamomile make a decent mug of tea from a teaspoon of dried leaf steeped for five minutes. Lavender goes into shortbread, sleep pillows and drawers between the linen. And the flowers — a dried posy tied with twine, a wreath of nigella and yarrow, a jug of hydrangea heads on the sill — carry the summer indoors without a single penny spent.
That, really, is the pleasure of it. On a grey afternoon in January, unscrewing a jar of August thyme is a small, particular sort of contentment that no shop-bought jar quite manages.
