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...

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.