Half-hour wreath

I set myself a challenge today: to make a Christmas wreath in under half-an-hour, without wire, simply out of material I could find in the garden.

I've never tried this before, as I normally use florist's foam wreath bases. I knew that I also had to set myself a time limit for two reasons: the daylight would run out soon and I had limited time in which to get a photograph of the finished wreath without having to resort to flash, and also I love making wreaths and linger over a single one for at least an hour normally, in a completely obsessive way.

Next year I'd like to make wreaths to sell from the garden and to do this, I need to be able to make them pretty cheaply and quickly so I can sell them for a realistic price. I'm fed up with seeing over-priced, uncreative, chucked together wreaths on wires everywhere that cost £10+. I'd like to be able to offer a better, more reasonably priced and sustainable alternative for people locally.

My technique probably needs a bit of fine-tuning, but it is basically this: get two fresh, smallish willow whips that don't have very thick ends (I cut down some of this year's growth on our existing willow). Place them together, using the opposite ends, and twist around each other in a round to form a wreath base, tucking in the ends.

Then take your main foliage (I had leftover fir branches from trimming our Christmas tree) and work in between the willow in a clockwise direction until it's completely covered.

Add anything you can find to make points of interest and colour, tucking them in as you go along; I used some snow berries, young eucalyptus branches, a few sprigs of rosemary (for scent more than anything else) and some fir cones on branches.

The only cheating bit was recycling some apples that I had on a wreath last year (look in the January sales in places such as Hobbycraft as they're often half price then!). They had the added bonus of being on wires, so could be wrapped around the main wreath, holding at least some of it together.

The finished product is above, and although I think it could obviously be better, I think in the time allowed and with the restrictions I placed on myself, it's pretty good. It can't be too bad as it's now on my neighbour's door after she spotted it in the yard and said they were about to go and buy one.



Cold again (real feel -4) in the garden today, but Paul and I managed to shift some of the huge pile of soil conditioner that was left outside our gate by the council last week. This was a surprise as I didn't expect it, but, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, the timing could have been better as I'll never move it all this side of the New Year. I hope at least some of it will still be there then!

All the far flower borders got a good layer of this lovely stuff, as did the mint patch. I also weeded the strawberry patch and added some to that as well. This will improve the soil and hopefully keep those weeds down a bit too.

I also planted the dwarf iris bulbs near where the pond will be eventually as I was running out of time to get those in the ground and for once it wasn't frozen.

This will be the last post for a few weeks now as I'm taking a break over Christmas, so have a good holiday, and all the best for 2008.