Sandy's Place-Potpourri

I love to have my indoor surroundings smell just like my flower garden on a warm summer day.
The way to achieve that is to have potpourri in beautiful containers sitting in stratigic locations thru out your house.

Making your own dry potpourris is an easy and enjoyable process.
Especially when you grow the plants yourself!

Here you will find directions for making potpourri and a list of wonderfully fragrant plants that make excellent potpourri.

How to make your own Potpourri

First, you will need to collect and dry your potpourri material. Collect flowers, leaves and branches of the plants early in the morning after the dew has dried off of the plants. Many different types of flowers and leaves can be used. The most often used flowers are rose petals, lavender, lemon verbena, rose geranium and tuberrose. Do not hesitate to try different varieties. If it has rained recently, wait until two days after the rain before harvesting material. Dry the material on a piece of screen wire suspended off the surface. Turn the material every couple of days until very dry. Keep materials out of sunlight or the materials may become quickly faded. If materials tends to blow off, place another piece of screen over the materials. You do not have to harvest all of the materials needed for a potpourii at one time. Small quantities can be stored in airtight containers until needed.

When enough materials have been collected and dried, it is time to staart your potpourii.
Start by mixing flowers, leaves and twigs until you have achieved the right visual effect. The right visual effect is whatever pleases you most.
For every quart of flowers and leaves, add one tablespoon of fixative material. (Fixative can be found at your local craft store, like Franks Nursery). To this mixture add a couple drops or more of fragrance oil. Again, the right mixture is the ones that pleases you most.
When the mixture is complete, store in an airtight container to allow the various fragrances to meld together.
The finished product can be stored in glass containers for a beautiful visual effect and the top opened whenever fragrance is desired. The mixture can also be made into sachets by placing in small teabags or muslin or cheesecloth bags.

Potpourri Plants

Try your local nursery's for these wonderful, fragrant plants. Many mail order companys carry them as well. A list of my favorite on-line catalogs can be found Here

Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus Deodara)--Very fragrant. A pyramidal tree growing to 60m. Easy working wood. Use both leaves and wood in potpourri. A very stately tree.
Incense Cedar (Calocedrus Decurrens)--Very hardy. The wood is scented and used to make cedar chests and closet shelves. The dried leaves and wood are great in potpourri. An attractive lawn tree.
Weeping Myall (Acacia Pendula)--A graceful Australian tree resembling a weeping willow that has violet scented wood. Actually grows quite well in pots. The violet scent will last for months.
Butterfly Bush (Buddlefa)--A vigorous, deciduous bush with long closely packed, very fragrant, lilac to purple flowers. The nectarine filled flowers will attract butterflies constantly. Mostly used in a garden setting. The fragrant flowers make great potpourri fixings.
Lake Lilac (Syringa)--A deciduous shrub grown for its white-purple flowers and intoxicating fragrance.
Snow White Carnation (Dianthus Caryophyllus)--Probably the whitest carnations you will ever see. An excellent cutflower, they also make wonderful bedding and border plants. Has a spicy-sweet fragrance.
Lavender--Attractive perennials grown for their beautiful blooms and sweet scent. They prefer full sun and light, rich soil. Makes wonderful cut and dried flowers as well as potpourri. It only takes a few lavender plants to fill your garden with fragrance. I have one planted under each of my bedroom windows.
Cinnamon Basil--A tender annual used to season food. Its leaves have a spicy cinnamon fragrance that holds up well in potpourri, sachets and soaps.
Lemon Basil--A tender annual with a fresh lemony fragrance. Much used as a seasoning. Used also in soaps.
Peppermint--A beautiful plant with purple flowers and purple tinged leaves. Its fragrance is used many different ways. This plant prefers moist soil. Great as an edging around water gardens.
Lavender Cotton (Santolina)--Very attractive plants with button type flowers that have strong herbal lavender scent. It may not flower the first year, but don't give up on this plant. It's worth the wait!
Citrodora Eucalyptus--An easy to grow pot plant that will grow just about anywhere. Has the familiar Eucalyptus silvery green leaves and fresh lemony scent.
Mediterranean Rosemary--A beautiful plant with pale blue fragrant flowers. An evergreen plant that does best in well drained soils. Holds fragrance well in potpourri.
Purple Horse Mint (Monarda Citriodora)--A hardy annual with deep purple to lavender blooms. Flowers are arranged in whorls stair-stepping up a single stem. Attracts bees and hummingbirds.
Rich Lavender Pennyroyal--Rich lavender flower spikes on a small rather sprawling shrub. The intensely fragrant leaves are a good base potpourri.
Great Blue Lobelia--A hardy perennial with clear blue or white flowers in long leafy spikes over a long period of time. The fragrance of the flowers will "fill-out" any potpourri. Grows 2-3 feet.
Wild Daisy--Very pretty daisies with stout stems and large blooms. Seems to have mroe fragrance than cultivated variety.
Matricaria Mayflower--A hardy perennial with finely cut foliage and profusions of small daisy-like flowers. Very easy to raise seed. Will flower in as soon as 6 weeks from seeds. Excellent for cut and dried arrangements.
Blanket Flower (Gaillardia Aristata)--A hardy drought resistant perennial that forms huge colonies of brilliant red flowers with yellow rims. Easy to raise. 1-2 ft high.
Virgin White Babys Breath--Easily grown annual with clouds of white fragrant flowers. This is the variety used by florist in most dried arrnagements and cut flower arrangements.

Be brave..look in your garden, in the woods, around lakes and ponds. Take your kids with you, make it an adventurous outing to seek out beautiful leaves, pine cones, even nuts, for visual effect.
I have a huge, shallow wooden bowl sitting on an old trunk in front of my couch that I continously add "found" things to.
Give it a try and see how rewarding it can be to make home made potpourri!

For information on drying flowers, see my Drying Flowers Page

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