The Royal Project's Dried Flower Project started as a research on dried flowers and useful ferns, conducted between 1978 and 1981 and again during 1981 - 1984 with support from the United States Department of Agriculture-American Research Service (USDA-ARS). The research team later expanded their work, from propagating ferns for the fresh cut leaves market and ornamental pot plants for home decoration, to a fully developed technology involving drying, bleaching, and dyeing fern fronds for sale as decorative items. The process later included flowers, fruits, leaves, pods and seeds of various plants native to Thai forests, as well as those introduced from temperate and sub-tropical countries.
Thailand. is one of the world's biggest sources of materials for the dried flowers and leaves industry. They can be found everywhere, from the flatlands of the central region to a height of 2,600 meters above sea level in mountainous northern Thailand. Various kinds of leaves and flowers are collected from the wild by hilltribe villagers in Chom Thong, Inthanon and Huay Luek in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, as well as farmers in Ubon Ratchathani and Yasothon in the northeast and Prachin Buri in the west, after the harvest season is over.
The Dried Flower Project does not only enourage the collection of flowers from the wild but also promotes the planting of such crops as oat, barley, wheat, sorghum, strawflowes, linseed, hydrangea, wild luffa, gypsophyla, statice and various kinds of grasses, for processing onto dried, bleached and dyed decorative materials, All have foreign origin are very popular with Bangkokians who like decorating their homes with exotic things.
The Dried Flower Project have the following objectives: to find uses for locally available raw materials; to help hilltribes and farmers in impoverished areas earn a supplementary income by collecting flowers, leaves, pods and seeds from the wild; to encourage protection of forests as valuable, steady sources of raw materials which the above-mentioned hilltribes and farmers can sell to earn an extra income; and to promote the use of locally -produced decorative items, both native and of exotic origin, and thus save the country millions of baht in foreign exchange.
A new environmental awareness of the need to use natural products sustainably, the knowledge that natural products are in many instances better than their synthetic counterparts for the uses intended, and the creation of support and organization for the development of equitable marketing operations, could make the strategy work.
Balancing the alternative of deforestation and loss of biological diversity against the conservation of both, and taking into consideration the problems involved in developing wild product trade, this strategy still appears to some to be the best long-term solution to the problem of saving tropical forests.