STORY BY JOANNA GAINES
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LISA PETROLE AND MIACHEL PRUETT
This story has been adapted from the fall 2024 issue of Magnolia Journal.
A place to pause, press, and remember.
When Chip and I bought our dream property for our family in 2012, we knew it was going to be quite the undertaking—40 acres of land and a 19th-century farmhouse surrounded by cedar posts and barbed wire fencing. One of the first things Chip and the boys did when we purchased this place was build a rose garden and potting shed. It was our way of acknowledging that, right in the thick of all the work we had ahead of us, we were going to cultivate beauty for the seasons ahead.
In the following years, that little rose shed became storage, and I put my efforts toward a larger garden farther back on the property (one you may recognize if you’ve followed our story). It’s complete with a shed for potting, propagating, and gathering with friends, along with rows and rows of blooms we plant and harvest year after year. Time in that garden never fails to teach me lessons in resilience, patience, and trust in a way that requires my full self—with my hands, on my knees, and fully leaning in.
But whether I’m ready or not, the garden moves on. I know the garden’s constant change is part of its mystery, but there’s a part of me that longs for these seasons to linger just a little bit longer. I want to preserve all that we’ve planted, cultivated, and reaped each season—to capture the wonder that captured us. Recently, I decided to return to that decade-old rose garden and shed and give it a new purpose. I wanted it to serve as a dedicated place to do what my family and I have been doing for years: to press flowers as a way to pause, document, and savor what we’ve grown together.
It didn’t take long to decide that the original rose garden needed a complete overhaul, as the shed and framing around the flowerbeds had started to rot. We designed and built a larger cottage, complete with a roof inspired by the stunning architecture we saw on our family’s trip to South Korea last year.
Now this new rose cottage is a haven for me to keep tools, arrange florals, and press and preserve nature’s bounty. It’s a place where, in the midst of our active, changing landscape, I can almost freeze time and document the gifts our garden gives us—the blooms, the lessons, the memories. Yes, the garden moves on. But maybe, in this act of remembering, we won’t. Not without first taking hold of the beauty.
At the heart of the revitalized rose cottage, I wanted an herbarium. Usually found in botanical gardens, museums, and arboretums, an herbarium is a collection of dried, pressed plants mounted on sheets of paper. They’re documented to the utmost scientific detail and organized and archived using a specific system so people can easily retrieve, identify, and study the findings—from decades or even hundreds of years back. It was only recently that a friend introduced me to the herbarium and its place in the scientific world, but in a way, I had already been keeping my own (albeit humble) version of an herbarium for years.
When we first built that larger shed beside the main garden, I bought a whole slew of antique garden books for it and discovered many of them contained pressed flowers. I was enjoying these gifts someone had left behind from 10, 20, even 50 years ago, and it made me want to pass on similar gifts to my kids—even their kids someday. So our family began pressing our flowers from the farm in some of those old books and started a new leather-bound book of our own. Now, with the new rose cottage, we have space to expand into a larger library of pressed treasures made to last.
Granted, our little herbarium is a far cry from the more established ones all over the world. While mine does help me remember specific varieties of plants (“which type of zinnia did we plant two springs ago?”) and how they grew and blossomed in a specific season, I’ll admit my process is less structured and more fluid. A true scientific herbarium may be used for cataloging, but mine is more for capturing memories.
Maybe I’m just getting older, but the garden’s cycles seem to turn faster and faster, and I’m craving creative ways to tangibly hold a season or a moment in a way a photograph can’t quite do justice. I want to trace my fingers over the stems, see my worn handwritten script or Crew’s little scribbles next to each one. Our herbarium slowly, gently invites me to create something that will outlive me—an act of service that brings joy now and hopefully will bring joy again to whoever may experience it in the future.
Herbarium: Jo's How-To
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
- A cut plant stem
- 2 pieces of thin newsprint
- 2 pieces of cardboard or thick cardstock
- Flower press or stack of heavy books
- Mounting paper
- Paintbrush and neutral pH adhesive or linen hanging tape
- Herbarium card
HOW TO PRESS:
- Start with one flat sheet of cardboard or thick cardstock and top with a piece of thin newsprint.
- Arrange your cut stem on top of the newsprint. This is the position your stem will dry in, so take your time.
- Once you're ready, place another piece of newsprint on top of your stem, gently pressing it down.
- Top with another flat sheet of cardboard or thick cardstock.
- Place the full stack in a flower press if you have one, or simply grab a few of the largest, heaviest books you can find and place them on top.
- Wait two to three weeks (some thicker blooms require a little more time) for your stems to be fully dried and ready to mount.
- After two to three weeks, remove the books and materials used to press, and carefully transfer your stem to the paper you want to mount it to.
- Using a paintbrush, lightly coat the back of your stem with neutral pH adhesive and carefully stick your stem to the paper. If you prefer the look of tape on stems, adhere the specimen to the paper using thin pieces of linen hanging tape.
- Either fill out an herbarium card and glue it to the paper, or simply take notes directly on the paper. Some things you can include: the plant’s name, the date, who picked it, and any other memory attached to the stem that you don’t want to forget.
- Decide how you want to store or display your collection.
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From the garden to your home—explore print reproductions of handpicked plants Jo pressed in her rose cottage.
