The Natural Gardener
If there’s one word to describe us gardeners, it’s thrifty. Yes, we’re often imaginative, artistic and ever-hopeful, but perhaps our most admirable trait is the ability to reuse, recycle and make do and mend with commendable ingenuity. It’s nice to see the value in everything, especially if it comes from the garden.
I love receiving home-made gifts, produced with little outlay from produce and plants off the plot, but made with a lot of time and care. My gardener and florist sister makes wonderful wreath decorations using pussy willow buds, grass flowers and helichrysum that’ll take pride of place in my house this winter, so I’ve been inspired to see what I can make myself for family and friends. Besides, it’s a nice, comforting project for dank, dark days and continuing Covid restrictions!
There’s still plenty to glean from out there – ferns look lovely, seed heads are still statuesque and I’ve lots of leaves, bark, grasses and stems to bring indoors. I had an idea to take imprints from ferns and other leaves, pressing them into squares of air-drying clay (available from craft stores) and, after drying and a bit of painting, making coasters, tiles, wall-hangings, tree decorations and maybe even necklaces. It takes a bit of experimentation, but you eventually happen on something you’d be happy to give as a gift! In a similar vein, you can create leaf silhouette pictures or other garden-themed artworks and make them into hand-made Christmas cards.
To make use of garden harvests, it’s a lot of fun and quite easy to make jams, of course, and I’ve plenty of foxglove, campion, nigella and aquilegia seed that I’ll pack up in small brown envelopes and hessian bags for green-fingered chums.
Cornus stems, chopped to fit, make naturalistic pot surrounds glued onto jars or boxes. You could try a willow-woven pot, too. There’s also endless scope for turning those ubiquitous little terracotta pots from the garden centre into crafty creations – I thought pebble pots might look quite nice. If you’ve had to chop
down any hefty, thick tree limbs recently, consider that the wood, sawn into 2.5cm (1in) thick circles, might make attractive coasters or ‘canvases’ for miniature paintings.
And lastly, to remind myself and others that happier, sunnier and more flowery days are to come, I’ve found a few old summery photos I took on my phone of beautiful blooms and borders. I might see how they look turned into postcards – useful and uplifting!