Rescuing Wilted Hydrangeas
I love cut flowers - they are a wonderful little affordable luxury, especially if you pick up supermarket blooms and arrange them yourself.
And cut flowers are so much less demanding than plants. They are not supposed to last forever, so I don’t have to feel guilty when they pass like I do when I inadvertently murder a plant.
Except for hydrangeas. I adore these flowers in all their showy splendor and colors, but they are always SUCH drama queens!
Inevitably, at least one or two stems will wilt dramatically within a day of being put in an arrangement.
This has to do with any number of factors about the stems before they got to me…how and when they were cut, how mature they are, and how they were stored…so I’m not at fault (the same cannot be said about my track record with plants…), but it IS still annoying.
Hydrangeas you can cut from the yard give you a little more control and therefore tend to hold up better. These from a friends bush lasted for weeks with no intervention but fresh water and trimmed stems every few days.
And these blooms for a zoom flower arranging class arrived on my doorstep in a box with each stem in a water tube - they were clearly cut and stored well because they lasted a loooong time and never wilted.
But supermarket hydrangeas? Those are a total gamble and I can’t resist them anyway.
Can anything be done to preserve your investment in this fleeting beauty? The good news is YES!
First of all, you need to know that hydrangeas are thirsty little lushes. And any lack of water causes them to have a full on tantrum like a 2 year old and fling themselves dramatically to the ground.
There are several tricks that can better your chances of successful longevity for cut hydrangeas and I have employed them all on my supermarket purchases with pretty steady success.
Trimming the stems
Do not leave them out of water for any longer than the time it takes to make a fresh cut on the stem. And as with all flowers, cut with a sharp knife or scissors. And then for woody stems like hydrangeas have, make several cuts up the sides of the stem from the bottom up about an inch to increase the surface area for water uptake.
Remove leaves
I confess I do not always start by removing the leaves since I like how they look in an arrangement, but hydrangea leaves can steal water before it reaches the flower at the top and we KNOW how unhappy that makes the flowers sooooo….I do remove them if I have to rehabilitate a blossom.
Stem Dip
Dip the cut stems in alum powder. Yes the alum in the spice aisle at the grocery store (don’t use it for food once you’ve dedicated it for flowers!) I do not know what voodoo this does, but I’ve read it helps increase water uptake in the stems, and I’ll try anything to keep these mop heads from wilting!
Submerge
Apparently, the blossoms can absorb water right through the petals as well as via the stems, so submerging the whole stem, flower and all, is a possible preventative measure before arranging and a viable step in rehabbing a wilted bloom.
Boiling water
This is my go-to trick, which I sometimes use in conjunction with submerging the blooms if the situation looks dire.
Remove the wilted stem(s) from the arrangement, make a fresh cut and slits, and then put the stems in a mug of boiling water. The hot water theoretically dissolves any sap clogging the stems and restores water uptake.
It’s like magic! Apparently time out in a spa fixes everyone 😂
Here are stems I recently rehabilitated with the boiling water method…
This hydrangea came in a gifted bouquet 3 1/2 weeks ago and wilted the very next day. I did the submerge and then boiling water tricks and it has outlasted every other flower in the arrangement. At almost 4 weeks now it is finally starting to go by?!
Nothing beats real flowers, but of course faux flowers are guaranteed to be non wilting and good faux hydrangeas are not easy to distinguish from the real thing - I keep these on hand for ‘emergency’ arrangements when I can’t get my hands on real flowers, or even to mix into centerpieces or arrangements with some real flowers in a pinch!
But for purists, nothing but the real thing will do. Are you a hydrangea lover too?
Happy Arranging!
Other posts you might enjoy:
Tips and tricks for a beautiful arrangement