Natural Christmas Decorations: Crafts from the Garden

Plants make the best DIY natural Christmas decorations, and this is why - you get to tick two jobs off your to-do list at once. Give your shrubs a trim, swerve the green bin and bring the cuttings indoors. Then stick the Bublé on, pour yourself a sherry and sort the decor too. That’s pretty much it! Decorating with plants in winter is fun, cheap, environmentally friendly and a tradition going back to pre-Christmas times. Plus, your decorations will smell as good as they look (saving you $$$ on pine plug-ins) and you can just sling them on the compost heap in the new year instead of having to brave the loft.

The best plants for Christmas decorations

The best plants for the job are evergreen trees and shrubs - they’re traditional, look bright and fresh, and will last for weeks even in a warm room. You can also include some festive red tones with holly berries or crabapples, and add some dried seed heads and/or twisty twigs for texture. If you have a willow or hazel tree (or any bendy stems), you can also use these to construct the base of your wreath.

Some of the best plants are: 

• Holly
• Ivy
• Eucalyptus
• Fir/spruce/leylandii - any evergreen is good!
• Crabapples and other berries
• Pine cones
• Interesting twigs (eg: contorted hazel)
• Long, bendy twigs (eg: willow, hazel)
• Dried seed heads (eg: poppy, teasel, eryngium)
• Herbs, spices or dried citrus slices for scent

You don’t have to use all of these or indeed any - just use whatever you have available.

You’ll need

• Pruners/secateurs
• Artisan trug/carrier bag for the trimmings
• Florists’ wire/twigs/ready made wreath base
• Ribbon for hanging
• Brown paper
• Twine
• Scissors
• Sherry

How to harvest your own decor

On a dry day, take your secateurs and your receptacle of choice into the garden and start cutting. To get rid of any lurking insects, give your foliage a shake before bringing it indoors. 

If you don’t have a lot to harvest in your own garden, why not ask the neighbours or forage from your local woods or hedgerows?

Natural wreaths & swags

Don’t spend £75 on a fancy wreath making experience - get your mates together, chuck some cinnamon in a bottle of microwaved own-brand red and do it yourself.

1. For a wreath, make a circle of wire/twigs about 30cm in diameter (bigger is fine, but any smaller and you might struggle to attach the foliage). It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle as the foliage will cover it anyway.
2. Wrap a piece of wire around the end of each stem of foliage and attach it to the wreath. Make sure they overlap so there aren’t any gaps.
3. Anything that doesn’t have a stem can be attached by threading wire through it or glueing it on.
4. Tie a ribbon to your finished wreath and hang it from a hook or wreath hanger.
5. To make swags for your mantelpiece, table or stairs, simply substitute a long length of twisted twigs or wire for the circle.

Come unstuck? Sherries all round and watch this demonstration from Kew Gardens:

Sustainable gift wrapping

UK Christmas waste statistics suggest a typical household generates over three black bags of packaging each Christmas. The good news is that you can avoid adding to this and impress your family with your mad crafting skills in one fell swoop, by making your own natural gift wrap. Simply buy a roll of brown paper from the post office (if yours is still open) and grab some garden twine from your shed. If you have kids, you can multitask even more by getting them to decorate the paper with potato prints.

Wrap your gifts in the brown paper (no sticky tape needed) and tie them with the twine. Then stick a bit of leylandii under the twine and the job’s a good ‘un. It’s not cheap and nasty, it’s on-trend Scandi. Pour yourself another sherry, you’ve earned it.

Ultra-festive tablescaping

Tablescaping - or as it’s known in our house, covering up the gravy stain on Grandma’s table cloth - is a lovely way of bringing a touch of nature to your festive meals. The best part is that anything goes. If you’ve got a shallow tray (a baking tin or plant tray will do), simply line it with brown paper, add some candles or baubles and arrange your plant trimmings around them. This is quick, easy and infinitely changeable - nothing’s stuck down so you can change it if any of the plants starts to fade.

I also love that in this video, there seems to be no German translation for ‘Last Minute’. If you’re in the ’scaping zone, why not add place settings and tie foliage to the backs of your dining chairs? I reckon that deserves a sherry.

Please drink responsibly. www.drinkaware.co.uk.