Christmas represents a wonderful opportunity to unleash your creative flair. Bringing in fresh foliage from your own garden to create wreaths, decorations and gifts is an easy win on many levels: it's sustainable, eco-friendly, thrifty and, most importantly, it's fun! The projects over the coming pages give you easy-to-follow inspiration that you can adapt based on whatever you have in your garden. As base materials, we've used ivy, skimmia, cedar and even Leylandii, but try any evergreens you have access to. Forage sustainably for decorative flourishes such as berries, dried seedheads and pine cones to add the finishing touches.
I hope you'll feel inspired to get outside and enjoy making beautiful festive creations that are bespoke to your own garden this Christmas.
Berry wreath
'Merry and bright' is the theme for this wreath, with berries, rosehips and flowers adding pops of colour to a textural base of mixed evergreens. The base is a wire frame that is cheap and can be used year after year, with the moss, foliage and decorations all harvested from the garden. As long as the wreath is not exposed to too much direct wind and rain, it will last well for three to four weeks.
You will need
- Garden string
- Wire frame
- Moss (sustainably foraged)
- Secateurs
- Evergreen foliage such as bay, euonymus, hebe, pine and skimmia
- Berries, hips and flowers such as pyracantha, rosehips, skimmia and viburnum
1 Tie string to the wire frame, then wind it all the way around the frame in a zig-zag pattern, leaving the string attached at the end. This is the base that you attach the moss to.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2023 de BBC Gardeners World.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
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We love June
We're cruising towards midsummer: this is a month full of love and abundance. Wherever you look there will be something in your garden that lifts the spirits and makes you glad to be alive. We have colour to cheer us, we have leaves that still have the bounce and freshness of small puppies, we have the first berries fattening up, there are birds frantically parenting very demanding broods of chicks, the bees are all over the place, it's prime barbecue and picnic season, and we have lawns as lush and green as billiard tables. What a month to fall in love.
Your wildlife month
The female will usually lay one clutch of up to eight eggs
An edible garden in pots
Join Lucy Bellamy in creating an edible container garden for all seasons, as she harvests what's ripe now and starts later-season crops
Garden craft with kids
Fill the summer holidays with fun nature makes for kids, including botanical printed t-shirts, seed sowing in upcycled food containers and a hanging home for beneficial insects. Jaime Johnson and family show you how
Secrets of a COLOURFUL GARDEN
Using a colour theme is an easy way to give any garden a strong, unified character - Nick Bailey shows you how
Indoor plants, outdoor treats
Break the rules and give your house plants a summer holiday, with Michael Perry's mixed pot display ideas
YOUR PRUNING MONTH
The first few weeks of summer are a good time to get spring-flowering plants in shape. Follow Frances' guide for best results
Gardening for wellbeing
As the pressures of modern living bear down, our outside spaces can provide soothing respite for our minds and bodies, says Arit Anderson
Your greenhouse guide to A fruitful summer
Get the best from your greenhouse fruit and vegetable crops this summer, with these tried and trusted growing tips from Adam Frost
Stars of the show
Agapanthus is the perfect midsummer plant, flowering with spectacular blooms from June onwards and, as Monty explains, it loves to grow in a pot
