Make your own Xmas wreath – for just €7!
FROM pillar-box red to lush green, or even a novelty snowman, the wreath you hang on your front door says a lot about you — and what’s inside your house.
The once-humble circle of evergreen foliage has had a makeover in recent years. But if you want to dodge expensive, shop-bought efforts, it can be done.
‘Wreath’ comes from an old English word, meaning to twist or wind, and that’s really all it is — twisted foliage around a frame, with a few decorations stuck in.
Now a classy wreath is a status symbol, hung from a Farrow & Ball-painted door.
But can you re-create the look at home without breaking the bank? Writer ALICE SMELLIE teamed up with Julia Montgomery of Bloomingdale Flowers, who holds wreathmaking classes and supplies stately homes, for the ultimate festive challenge: to make a fabulous wreath for less than a tenner. HEAD TO THE FRUIT BOWL I’M THRILLED to find I can cobble together a wreath with some everyday household items, starting with the contents of my fruit bowl.
I gather together oranges, clementines, lemons, limes and chilli peppers to transform them into dried fruit. ‘In order to use your own fruit you need to dry it the day before,’ cautions Julia. The drying process takes hours, though your kitchen smells divine, like mulled wine.
I put my oven on the lowest setting and slice the fruit as thinly as I can, so they take less time to dry. Once the fruit is laid out on a wire rack, I slice into the clementines eight times, without going all the way through the skin, and put them in the oven, along with the chillies.
After four hours the lemons and limes are done. At 9pm I remove all the citrus fruit and turn off the oven, leaving the chillies and clementines in overnight. A dehydrator takes approximately half the time. A CIRCLE OF MOSS I OPTIMISTICALLY suggest a wire coat hanger for the frame of the wreath, which Julia says is perfectly adequate. She shows me how to twist it into a circle by gently bending it.
Moss, which can be picked from your own garden, forms the basis of the wreath and helps cover up the wire frame. It needs to be stringy sphagnum moss, not the earthy moss that grows on walls, but it should be widely available.
Julia recommends taking a clump and fashioning it into a sausage shape, then using florist binding wire to firmly attach it to your circle, working all the way around.
‘As you get to the end of each sausage, add another one, so you have a seamless circle,’ she says. The wire is near-invisible, but don’t pack it too tightly. Then cut the wire and twist the ends together.’
I was concerned about using damp moss, but Julia points out that the wreath will be hanging outside. ‘Don’t worry — it will easily last until the end of Christmas,’ she reassures me. FEELING EVERGREEN ‘YOU can use pretty much any evergreen,’ says Julia. ‘There’s a surprising amount in the garden at this time of year. Cut a footlong branch from a tree — from this you can cut smaller branches to overlap on the wreath.’
Other plants include ivy, holly, eucalyptus, rosemary, bay, rose hips, spindleberry and box leaves. We are also using pine cones, crab apples and a pretty red flower called skimmia, all of which are cut from the garden.
If you want dried flowers, these need to either be bought or made in advance by hanging flowers over a warm radiator for a few days.
Once chosen, lay little bunches of the greenery on top, all facing in the same direction. Chop the ends so they’re reasonably even and layer them around the circle. Twist some florist binding wire firmly around them to attach them.
I am astonished at how quickly the wreath appears to eat the foliage — you need at least three times the amount you’d think. What’s also surprising is how elegant it looks, even when you are as haphazard as I am.
‘It’s interesting that when we do wreath days everybody is given the same raw materials and they all end up with completely different results,’ says Julia.
DECORATION TIME
NOW for what I imagine will be the really tricky bit: attaching my carefully dried fruit. How on earth will I make it stick on?
Thankfully when Julia shows me I see that it is easier than I thought — though watching her neat work of art compared with my messier attempt, I conclude that years of training are definitely a bonus.
Again, wire is used — threaded through orange slices (three at a time) and whole clementines and limes, or tied around chillies and cinnamon. My chillies looked flabby, so I’d recommend using ready-dried ones.
Next the wire is pushed through the moss and clipped at the end, then doubled over and pushed back into the moss, so there are no sharp bits sticking out.
I’m quite impressed by how it looks. The only difficulty is the crab apples, which are like blushcoloured berries. They are impossible to fix to the wire because they fall off their tiny stems. In the end Julia has to help me.
‘Push decorations in where they look right,’ she suggests. ‘You don’t need to go for perfect symmetry, and you can pack in as many as you like. Use two or three cones together to make it look more natural, and six to eight different items.’
TIED WITH A BOW
‘LEAVE space at the bottom for a bow, which is made by twisting ribbon around wire and fashioning it into a figure of eight, making a long tail,’ says Julia.
This is easier said than done and it takes me a few confused attempts to get it right.
Put a tight wire in the middle to fix the bow on. A hook can be made from the florists’ wire, and then it’s ready .
Frankly, it’s genius, and at under €7 I can highly recommend it as a great seasonal achievement!