DIY Christmas Wreath

 My grandmother always went to a lot of trouble to decorate the house for Christmas. They always had a huge tree and we would collect holly branches and other flowers to create huge flower arrangements for the hallways. It was with this in mind that I gathered up some holly branches and pine and conifer fronds from around the family farm and set about making a Christmas wreath. After about 40 minutes of fighting the spiky branches I came up with this great looking Holly and foliage wreath for our gate. 

Being summer in the southern hemisphere we don't have berries on the holly shrubs at the moment and the tips of the tree are young, soft and prone to droop, so I trimmed most of the soft foliage away and set about wiring the whole lot together.

These are the tools I used: thick plastic dipped gardening gloves to keep the prickles at bay, thin lacing wire, pruning shears, wire cutters and a pair of pliers.

I started with two Holly branches and twisted a metre length piece of wire around the branches, trying not to catch too many leaves. Half way along the branch I overlapped another branch and continues twisting the wire around. Lace the wire quite closely to keep the structure stable.

Keep adding overlapping branches and wrapping the wire as tightly as possible until the whole thing is lust over a mitre long. 

Now bend the length around into a circle being sure to overlap the ends. All the sections of the wreath should be about the same thickness. 

Once your happy with the initial overall look. Create a hanging loop and thread it through the laced wire. Looking at the overall placement of the branches, place the loop wherever you want the wreath to hang from. 

Now select your additional pine branches and push them into the wreath wherever you see fit. I used about 4 extra pine branches in total. 

For the base of the wreath I wired together a little posy of conifer fronds and cabbage tree flowers, leaving extra wire to use to wire it onto the wreath. 


To keep the wreath fresh I have been sprinkling it with water from the watering can every couple of days.




With the left over holly and branches I created this dinner party centre piece. 



Merry Christmas and best wishes to you all!