Mossing a wreath base

or just book a workshop with Tuckshop Flowers!

Make a willow wreath base

or just book a wreath making workshop with Tuckshop Flowers!

End of term and time for the big clear up

Last Christmas fair of the season today and my wreathed out fingers are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Much as I love making them, I have now officially reached wreath saturation. Just one more tiny circlet to do to surround a pillar candle, and then I'm done for the season, website orders permitting.

It has been an informative first Christmas for me and the flowers.  I now know that I need to plant my hyacinths for forcing in September for bigger poky nosed sprouters to sell at Christmas markets, and that crocuses are great for starting off in the dark. But my biggest lesson has been that I can plant as many crocus teacups as I can lay my hands on and that I'll probably manage to sell them all!  They have been a roaring success, and quite rightly so, as they are the perfect quirky gift for that hard to buy for person.

Doing workshops with enthusiastic wreath makers has been great seasonal fun and it is always amazing to see just how differently people can construct a wreath from the same set of ingredients.  A fun way to spend a few pre-Christmas evenings to get into the spirit (and the mince pies).

Two wedding orders under my belt to bring in the New Year, leave me feeling that things are ticking along nicely for Tuckshop Flowers.

So, with dahlia tubers drying in my porch, the contents of tulip bulb packets finally tucked into the waiting flower beds and only one packet of muscari still begging to be planted, I am almost ready to curl up and enjoy the Christmas holidays - when I have been to the recycling centre with my hacked down viburnums (damn damn damn damn those pesky beetles) and when I've finally cleared out the wreath making detritus from the living room, that is….

Berry bounty for the wreaths

The hedgerows have yielded luscious Christmas trimmings this year and my school run (or should that be amble?) has never been so foragingly productive.  Star turn of the day were the Snow Whitesque apples found in the park - perfect for wiring onto wreaths at tonight's workshop to make some globes of stunning colour.

Even the insides are gorgeous! What IS this variety? Want one!

While Christmas decorating in this house doesn't start in earnest until later in the month, there's one room of the house which the festive season has taken over, for this evening at least.

 The wallpapering table has had its legs reinforced in readiness for the bounty which will get woven upon it and Frank Sinatra's Christmas album has had the dust blown off its cover in readiness for the occasion.  It even had got an preliminary airing while I made pastry this morning.  The cats ran off into the garden as I yodelled along with gusto….

 Really looking forward to this evening as tonight's participants are a group of friends and I reckon they'll be very pleased with their creative efforts by the end of it - wreaths truly are such satisfying things to make.  My dry run last week (a red wine and natterfest) with one of my mates was very enjoyable and she was delighted with the wreath she produced.

Just a batch of mince pies to make, and some mulled wine to warm and then it looks like we're all set for a very Christmassy evening.  Must remember not to sing though.

A necklace of crab apple and a feather of grass.

I've been grubbing around again….

Today's colour was definitely yellow.  The windfall crab apples in the school garden, the uprooted cotoneaster berries in a local skip and the rejected crocosmia seed heads sitting waiting for the green waste collection to come by for the very last time. (Birmingham is going over to wheelie bins for compostable waste, and a fee for using this service).  I also rootled through a bag containing magnolia trimmings - brought back memories of how magnolia saved my bacon on my first ever stall earlier this year.

My foraging sack, otherwise known as an H&M plastic bag, ranneth over on my way home from school:

With a bit of patient threading, spike trimming and mixing and matching, these bits were teamed up with items from my stockpile of natural goodies and became….

 … amongst other things.  Love the wisps of pampas grass heads on the white feathery one. Am quite taken with that.

Wordless Wednesday. Simply Swedish(ish)

Baublicious

Every year, my children get to purchase a new bauble for the tree and we have had some beauties - a handblown green glass globe strung on a velvet ribbon, a matt gold bauble frosted with a jacquard of glitter. And there have been horrors - plastic knobbly glitter peaches and bright blue monsters….

But you can't beat a bauble and I have not lost my childhood fascination for them - can still remember a small pale pink one with a scallop pattern of white glitter which I adored on the family tree for many years and the feeling of delight as I unearthed the segmented box in which it nestled when the decorations came out of hibernation each year.

Making lots of wreaths this year has given me an excuse to go bauble shopping and I've found some lovely clustered ones in a range of colours, finishes and sizes.  Here's today's wreath just pretending to have berries….

Today we are wearing.....

....mostly twigs.

This one is made from a metal wreath frame wrapped with silver birch twigs.  Two young teenagers on bikes saw me picking up twigs on my way back from school today and were curious as to what on earth I was doing.

"Here's one", kindly offered one youth, proffering a mangled stick which had been run over several times to me, the obviously mad lady.

I had to then explain that I only wanted pretty twigs, not any random manky objects - which probably just made me seem madder, now I come to think of it...

Twiggy wreaths are, however, among my favourite styles. Nice to have a birds nest on your door.  The only question remaining is: to bling or not to bling?  Toying with the idea of a clip on robin or a few gold sprayed teasel heads. What do you reckon?

Christmas bulbs: keeping them in the dark

I have imprisoned things in the dark dankness of my cellar today. Not something I did lightly.  Indeed, in order to achieve my objective I had to move the ironing board, the recycling, the camping table, the shopping bags and the vacuum cleaner and then remove the floor sections of my glory hole. (I'm sure the people who come to read the meter have palpitations and have flashbacks to Kathy Bates' film 'Misery' when I go through these procedures and usher them down the dark brick steps).

Today's victims, whose banishment will endure for about 8 weeks, were teacups full of crocus bulbs, and terracotta pots of hyacinths which I'm trying to force into flower around Christmas time.  I am going to put together a few teacup bulb kits for people to plant themselves, but feel that these are nicer sold ready growing, with a hope of flowers during the dark days of December/January rather than the recipient having to plant them up some time in the new year, with the resulting flowers appearing at the same time as the ones in the garden.  What do you think?

This spring's teacup planter crop in late March - a great success with customers.

In the garden, I've cleared spaces and put in lots of scented narcissus bulbs, muscari and leucojum aestivum. I've also laid waste to a couple of the viburnum bushes, which has generated new wish lists for things to put in the gaps.  Scented peonies from Kelways Nurseries are currently tempting me greatly, but they have such a short season for the space they take up.  Should probably be more practical about it, although they are soooooo beautiful and I love the idea of scent with those blousy blooms.

Still have all my tulips to plant, but will leave those until November to avoid the risk of the fungal disease, tulip fire.  At least the weather is turning colder now, which should kill off lurking bugs and beasties that munch.  It will also, sadly,  put paid to my cosmos and dahlias which are still flowering their hearts out.  In the greenhouse, however, I've got a nascent crop of cornflowers, ammi, marigolds and cerinthe which are all doing brilliantly from September sowings.  I've got so many cornflowers, that I'm even going to risk planting out a load after hardening them off to take pot luck in the great outdoors over winter.  If they don't make it, at least I won't have had to invest lots of watering time and compost on their upkeep over the next few months.

I didn't have a great deal of success with my anemones this year and the Twitterati of #britishflowers were all swooning over their tunnel grown crops of the same, so have today planted lots of black nuggety corms in my greenhouse border, to see if I have better luck with getting a decent crop of them in there.  I'm dreaming of future bunches as I tend all these bulbs and babies.

This year's anemone planting is 'The Bride' - a white variety. Hope I get these mad red ones reappearing too.

But back to the present:  I've got 100 wreath bases taking up valuable shelf space in my shed, lavender, statice and honesty suspended from anything vaguely suspenderable (including my light fittings where the ceiling is high enough) and bags full of cones waiting for the call to action.  It feels very odd to be thinking about Christmas this early, but need to start organising my plan of action for stall wares in November and December.   I've even got to organise a Christmas photoshoot for my china wares in order to generate some festive purchase spirit in my online shop!  I just hope my family will be in the mood for mince pies and german lebkuchen at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Dress up your doors (again!)

Ooh - so much fun to be had with this wreath making lark.  Decided after the previous post that I needed something brighter to go with my dark green front door.  A quick peer into my shopping bag of foragements, soon showed me the way to go. Variegated holly for starters - very splashy and bright. Next,  those lovely yellowy green dogwood stems had to figure largely, along with their festive red cousins.  Poked them into the wreath frame and wrapped them around it, wiring them to hold them in place.

For some added texture, pushed some fir cones between the stems (am hoping my children don't slam the door too hard and make them fall out!) and then went a wander round the garden on the hunt for more bright stuff.  All those angular bits of lonicera Baggensen's Gold seem to fit the bill, so spiked them around the inside and outside of the frame to break up the outline.

The only downside to this well-dressed front door is that our visitors will need to be hard-fisted door knockers throughout the festive season as we don't have a bell. Maybe such activity will restore circulation to their frost-bitten fingers?

On a softer and more scented note, played around with twigs and herb leaves to make an indoor wreath.  Made a base of sage, rosemary and lavender sprigs, then added the birch twigs, silvery honesty seed heads and a bit of blue spruce to fill in the gaps. I now get a lovely herby, resiny whiff every time I walk in the dining room.

I may have to adopt year-round wreath making as it is such a satisfying thing...

Tis the season to go foraging....

Spent the morning as the weirdo of the woods... or should that be the  mad lady in the park with floristry scissors?  Silver birch twigs, ivy flowers, fallen blue spruce branches, berries and yet more pine cones all got squirrelled away into my capacious Sainsbury's shopper.

On returning home, these were transformed into Christmas wreaths, made on a base of clematis stems that I couldn't resist making into frames when the thick, vine-like stems were felled along with various pear tree branches in February this year.

I love making wreaths. So satisfying and simple. Poke stuff into them, bind with wire, add a bit of this and that, and suddenly you have something so much nicer than the £6.99 holly boredom you can buy from every grocer on the high street.  Especially if you have discovered a brilliant stand of yellow and red dogwoods in the local park.

This is the one I made for my friend Jeanette, to be delivered tomorrow evening along with accompanying bottle of warming red wine....

Christmas presents for gardeners

Why is it that at this time of year, everything in gardening catalogues goes all jute coloured and wooden? (Either that or pink and covered in a floral print, in a fancy holder that will soon turn sludge coloured). So, if like me you don't want string or flowery nicknackery to feature in your Christmas purchases, here are a few alternative ideas...


present-ideas-for-gardeners

and, of course, there are always plants.....

I've just found someone else who seems to feel the same as me (with the exception of my penchant for hemp hand cream however!)

"All I want for Christmas is garden gold"

Ways to use up a sack of pine cones: part two

Christmas is coming, the garden's getting soggy, so it's time to mess around indoors

To make this you'll need:

A dinner plate and a small pillar candle
Pine cones
Orange chillies
Viburnum berries
Rosemary and lavender sprigs
Heather sprigs
Skimmia flowers
Ivy to trail around the plate and sprigs to add to the central foliage.
Tiny individual portion jam jars
Floristry wire.


Step 1: Cut a long length of floristry wire (about twice the circumference of your plate).
Wrap wire around the neck of a jam jar, then position a pine cone next to it and wrap the wire tightly around the lower segments of the cone.  Continue in this way until you have a circle of jars and pine cones that sits neatly in the centre of your plate.  Wire the two ends of your circle together and snip off any excess wire.

Step 2:  With your jar and cone ring positioned on your plate, fill the jars with water.  Add the larger leaved foliage equally to your jars.   Next, add the berries and chillis, making sure they are placed evenly around your circle. (Imagine there's a triangle placed on top of your circle, and dot a berry or chilli at each point).

Step 3:  Add the rosemary, lavender and skimmia flowers to the inner edge of your circle.  Turn the plate around to check if there are any empty sections which need more foliage adding.  Trail the ivy round the edge of the plate until you are happy with its position.  Add a little water to the plate to keep it fresh.

Step 4:  Place your candle in the centre of your arrangement.  If you candle is short, as mine was, you can always raise it by standing it on top of an additional small jam jar.

Ways to use up a sack of pine cones: part one...

My shed has been harbouring a sack of pine cones for some time, so I think it is now the right time to marshall them into service.    (My house may end up looking like a forest floor/disaster zone by Christmas, as the cats will doubtless see all dangling items as playthings).


Here is idea number one: Pine cone garland.

Ingredients

length of bead chain decoration (I got mine from Home Bargains - 6m for 99p)
pine cones (which have been left to dry)
pre-cut lengths of fine floristry wire (or you could use strong thread and a needle)

Wrap a length of wire round the base of the pine cone, weaving it between the segments. Pull it tight and twist.

Twist the ends of the wires around the segments between the beads on the chain to attach the cone.

Snip off any excess wire and tuck sharp ends out of the way.

Attach cones at the desired intervals and use to decorate a mantlepiece, shelf or stair rail.  Secure well with heavy objects,  hooks or tacks to ensure that any accompanying candles or delicate items are not at risk of being knocked over.

My tealight holders are the lids of the tiny jam jars I used for the posies in my last post. A perfect fit!

Recycle your jam jars, Christmas is coming.

Mini jam jars - the kind you get in hotels for your one-person breakfast, are great for individual place setting arrangements or for putting candles in and arranging for the Christmas table.  Make little posies if you can salvage a few hardy blooms from your garden, and arrange them down the centre of the table or in a circle, interspersed with candles.

Drunken damson Christmas cake

Have finally decanted my damson gin into bottles, but couldn't bear to just throw out the fruit and almonds which had been steeping in the alcohol, so stoned the prunelike remains and substituted them for raisins/sultanas in my Christmas cake recipe.  The recipe demands almonds to, so no need for substitions there.  Am looking forward to sampling it a couple of months from now.