Rainbow Roses

How to Prepare:

Collect the following items before you begin:

• White roses (or other available white flowers)
  • As many as you like!
  • Make sure your roses are buds that are just starting to open.If the buds are too tight, they may never open and if they have already unfurled, they will not have enough time to absorb the dye.
• Food colour dyes
• Water (will need enough to fill each narrow container)
• Sharp blade or knife
• Narrow glass containers, bud vases, test tubes or plastic bags
• Vase or container large enough to hold narrow containers
• Time!

Create Colourful Roses!

Step 1: Start by shortening the stems of your white roses (or flowers of choice!) so they are 8-12” . That way the dye doesn’t have too far to travel

Step 2: Divide each of your stems into three vertical sections using your sharp blade or knife. Cutone section for each colour) about 3” up each stem.

💡Activity Hack! Don’t make more than three to four sections in each stem or the flowers will become too fragile to survive!

Step 3: Mix 10-12 drops of food colouring dye with enough water to fill your narrow container. Have one colour per narrow container. Make sure you are using a good amount of dye so that the pigment will be saturated enough to really colour the petals!

💡Activity Hack! To get a full rainbow of colours in your petals, use red, blue, and yellow dyes. They will probably mix a bit on their way up each stem, creating a rainbow effect and making each rose a little bit different. 

Step 4: Each colour dye goes into its own separate narrow container. Your narrow containers should be attached to each other by wrapping an elastic band around them. Place your divided sections of each stem into the different containers. 

💡Activity Hack! You could also use plastic bags (instead of containers or test tubes) filled with dye and attach one to each stem section using rubber bands. That way you can stand roses up in a single large container and minimise the bending of the cut stem sections!

Step 5: Leave each stem section in your container/plastic bag to absorb the dye mixture for several days.  As you are waiting, you may notice the petals changing after a couple of hours, but leaving them in the dye mixture for up to a week will result in the most dramatic colours. 

💡Activity Hack! Make sure your flowers are not in direct sunlight while they are absorbing the dye. The cut flowers are already under stress and any extreme light or heat will weaken them further. 

💡Activity Hack! Make sure your roses are not left sitting in dry containers once all the water/dye mixture is absorbed. 

Step 6: Once you are happy with the colours of your roses, you can take the stems out of the containers/plastic bag and cut off the split sections.

Step 7: Place your flowers in a vase of room-temperature water and enjoy their beauty!

Rainbow Roses Complete! Congratulations!

How It Works

These colourful flowers are the result of the experiments done by a Dutch flower grower named Peter Van de Werken.

Van de Werken and his colleagues were on a mission to  develop new colours of roses, chrysanthemums, carnations, and a few other flowers.  

They began with white flowers and tried simply spraying the dye on the petals, but this did not give the roses the vibrant colouring they were hoping for. But then, Van de Werken came up with the idea of having the flowers take up dye through their vascular systems which is the network of tubes or vessels that transport water, nutrients and food throughout the plant. 

After much trial and error, special dyes made from plant extracts succeeded in creating vibrant colours in the petals of the roses! How vibrant did your roses come out?

This activity is inspired by: 

https://www.thespruce.com/rainbow-roses-4172423