Joanna Gaines‘ home is on display in her new show, “Magnolia Table: At the Farm,” and she gave a tour of one of her most beautiful spaces. Watch the former HGTV star’s behind-the-scenes video of her herbarium, where she preserves flowers.
Joanna Gaines Takes Fans Behind the Scenes of Magical Space
On September 13, Gaines took to Instagram to share a video of one of her favorite places on the farm.
“Take a peek behind the scenes at Jo’s herbarium where all the flower magic happens on the farm!” the caption shared. “New episodes of #MagnoliaTable: At the Farm premiere every Sunday at 11a|10c on @magnolianetwork and @foodnetwork!”
In the video, Gaines noted, “So we are in the winter months here at the farm. Some fun things about living in Texas is your roses are still in bloom because it’s a little warmer in Texas.”
She shared, “I feel like I get quite a few flushes of roses throughout the year.”
“But that’s not why I brought you here,” she continued. “I’m actually going to show you what’s happening on the inside.”
Gaines continued into her rose cottage. “Okay, so this is a space where I do all the floral preserving,” she explained.
“This is what I like to call the herbarium,” she noted. “It’s like a library of everything that I grow every season. It’s just kind of fun to record your seasonal garden, but in a more artsy way.”
Gaines shared, “And then the most fun part is making arrangements.” She shared a framed assortment of pressed dried flowers. “This is kind of a way that I like to display what I’ve grown in the garden every season.”
“My daughter Ella turned 18 this year and I made her an arrangement. Her favorite flower’s a rose, so I did a rose bouquet for her,” the “Magnolia Table” star explained.
She pulled out a rose that had been drying in a bin of silica sand for two months. “This is totally dry, but it looks fresh, and that’s what I love about this kind of preserving.”
Joanna Gaines Explained Her Love of Preserving
Gaines wrote about her herbarium in the August 2024 issue of Magnolia Journal.
“At the heart of the revitalized rose cottage, I wanted an herbarium,” she wrote. “Usually found in botanical gardens, museums, and arboretums, an herbarium is a collection of dried, pressed plants mounted on sheets of paper.”
Gaines continued, “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.”
The Magnolia empire owner noted that she had been keeping a “humble version of an herbarium for years,” by pressing flowers in books.
With the space in her rose cottage, Gaines expanded her preserving efforts. “A true scientific herbarium may be used for cataloging, but mine is more for capturing memories,” she noted.
“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.”
