Spruce up your home with festive foraging
You don’t have to venture far from the farmhouse to add some Christmas touches to your home – all the materials you need are at your fingertips, and they’re free. Over the next four pages, Farmlife meets two experts to show you how.
A farm might not be the most obvious source of inspiration when you’re thinking about how to make your home festive this month. But for Lincolnshire florist and famed floral blogger Simone Pickering, foraging around a friend’s arable farm in Spalding provides the ideal opportunity to find all the materials needed to make the perfect Christmas wreath.
“Farms are a great place to find foliage to make some lovely arrangements in time for Christmas,” she says.
“You can use traditional evergreens like pine or spruce, or larch with pinecones, but you can also be inventive and make use of things that are growing at the moment.
“Brassicas have some really great textures and can look very unusual on a wreath, but I also love using herbs like rosemary and sage, which have a lovely silvery-look and just smell amazing.
“They key is that all wreaths are mixed foliage – it doesn’t matter what you use and it doesn’t matter how you choose to make it, it’s just what looks nice to you.”
Simone says now is the perfect time to make a wreath for Christmas and it should survive in time for the big day. “In fact, most wreaths dry out rather than die, so you could put it away and use it again next year.”
You will need:
• An oasis ring, or a wire ring and moss (both available from florists’ or garden centres)
• Reel wire or baler twine
• Leaves, branches from evergreen trees and other foliage
• Flowers, baubles, feathers and ribbons to decorate (optional)
How to do it
1. Use an oasis ring or a wire ring as the basis of your wreath. “I prefer to use a wire ring as you can get a better shape,” says Simone. Taking damp spaghnum moss (available from garden centres and florists), pack it on to the frame a handful at a time and secure it by wrapping reel wire or baler twine around it. “It’s important to make sure the moss is even so your foliage balances out,” she says. “Secure it off by looping the wire onto the back of the hoop a few times.”
Top Tip: Have a bowl of water to hand so that if the moss starts to crumble you can wet it.
2. Gather a handful of mixed foliage together and lay it on the ring at an angle, wrapping more wire around the stems to secure. Lay the next handful of foliage at a 90° angle below the first, so the stalks make a “V” shape and you create a herringbone effect. “Ideally you want everything to go clockwise and I always find it easiest to start on the bottom left,” says Simone. “Cut the stalks short next to the moss so that they have access to the water supply.
Top Tip: When laying foliage, try to have different leaves on the top as it gives a different texture to the wreath.
3. When you’ve gone around the whole ring and finished securing bunches of foliage on it, you’ll be left with a small gap at the top. Take a final handful of foliage and wrap a length of reel wire around the stalks, then thread the wire into the gap through the moss and pull the leaves flat against the ring. Tie the wire on to the back of the brass ring to secure it.
Top Tip: If you have any foliage with berries, add it after you have finished the wreath so you can make sure they are visible on the top and you can avoid knocking the berries off.
4. Attatch string to the back of the brass ring so you can hang it from a nail on your door, or from you door knocker. “Nothing is an exact science, it’s just about what looks nice,” says Simone.
Top Tip: Your wreath should survive until Christmas Day – even if you do make it now – but if things do die, just take them out and replace them. If the weather gets warm, plunge the wreath in a bowl of water to re-soak the moss.
• For more tips and ideas for arranging flowers and making festive displays from Simone, visit her blog
Branch out
You don’t just have to use foliage and flowers on wreaths. “You can decorate them with anything,” says Simone. “Pheasant feathers and pinecones, ribbons and Christmas baubles – anything goes. Just glue them on with a hot glue gun.
“You can really personalise them as well and give them as a gift. I have a farmer friend who really likes poodles, so last year I made him a wreath with little models of dogs on it.”
• How to make Christmas indoor wreaths