As the festive season begins, there’s no better time to have a wander in your garden to see what greenery you might be able to use to make your own decorations.
One of our favourite ways to get inspired for winter foliage in the home is The Winter Garden by Emma Hardy. Her book offers a plethora of ideas on how to make your winter garden look more inviting and how to bring the outdoors indoors this Christmas.
Festive Foliage & Firs
Little pine conifers are ideal to bring indoors at Christmas, IKEA has a range of festive foliage available. What’s more, once the festive season is over you can move these trees outside to your porch or plant up in the garden. If you want a bit of sparkle, put some of those battery-operated fairy lights around the tree and it’s just the sweetest thing. You can even purchase solar powered fairy lights add a bit of sparkle!
Dazzling Displays
If you have common plants like holly, cotoneaster, rosemary and ivy, they can all be put to good use in Christmas displays both inside and out. Add softer greenery like bun moss or even moss from your lawn to add to a trough for the table, including other items such as mind-your-own-business (Soleirolia soleirolii) and bead plant (Nertera granadensis). Ivy, especially if it has the berries on it, looks great and lasts for ages. Pussy willow can be used, as can rosemary which keeps its shape, and eucalyptus.
Simply Succulents
Use succulents from an existing rockery to make a fantastic wreath which should look good all year round and can be refreshed and reused next year too. Use moss to line a metal wreath frame, pulling the moss into pieces and laying it in a ring shape slightly larger than the wire frame, root side up on the table. Lay the wire wreath frame on top of the moss and place handfuls of potting compost on the frame, then wrap the moss around the frame and the compost, securing it with copper wire. This should provide enough nutrients to keep the succulents happy. If you are using succulents from your garden, work a bit in advance and then you can leave the wreath flat for a couple of weeks to let the plants start rooting a bit.
Festive Framing
Your window boxes can be given pizzazz with the addition of violas and miniature ferns, while white cyclamen and silver-leafed plants such as cushion bush (Calocephalus brownii) and hairy canary clover (Dorycnium hirsutus ‘Little Boy Blue’) can give a frosty feel to a container. If you want a burst of colour, consider a larger container crammed with a mixture of plants with bright berries including pyracantha and winter cherry.
Looking for more inspiration?
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