Instructions

1. Pick the flowers when they are fully open but before any petal has started to brown at the edge. A bloom already past its best dries to a grey that no amount of oil will disguise.
2. Shake each head out and check for insects before it goes near a tray. There is no washing step here, because wet petals dry to a translucent film rather than keeping their shape.
3. Pull the carnation petals free but leave a few buds whole for the look of it, and keep the daisies as whole heads. A daisy head holds its shape as it dries; a stripped daisy is just a handful of white slivers.
4. Spread them on lined trays in a shallow layer with no petals stacked on one another. They shrink to a fraction of their size, so a tray that looks bare at the start will be right by the end.
5. Dehydrate at 46 °C for 8 hours, and expect to add several hours in humid weather. Flowers hold much less water than food does, so this is a short run by the machine's standards.
6. They are done when a petal crumbles into flakes rather than folding between your fingers. Anything that still bends goes back on, because a damp petal in a sealed jar of potpourri will grow mould in the dark.
7. Stir the orris root powder and the essential oil together in a glass bowl before the flowers go in. Orris root is the fixative — it holds the oil and lets it off slowly, and without it the scent is gone in a fortnight.
8. Fold the dried flowers through gently, then seal the lot in a closed container for a couple of weeks before using it. That resting time is what lets the fixative take up the oil, after which it stays fragrant about three months in an open bowl or six in a closed jar.