Crafts for Christmas: Natural Door Wreath

No matter how busy life gets, if you can find some time to make some naturally crafted decorations for Christmas, you’ll be pleased you made the effort. I used to look at people’s lovely festive door wreath’s longingly but they always seemed an unnecessary extravagance at a time of year when every cent counts. Eventually I had a go at making one for myself and have never looked back. Everything contained in the wreath above was foraged from the garden, the only cost being some forestry wire to hold some of the flora and fauna together.

Materials for a Natural Door Wreath

Four willow wands
(if you don’t have access to willow, garden centres or florists sell wire hoops, in which case you’d need to wrap them in moss first)
Seed heads and evergreens
(I’ve used Pittosporum, Hydrangea, Sedums, Hypericum, Rosemary and Ivy)
Secateurs
Twine to hang the wreath
florist wire

Taking the first piece of willow, wind it into a circle shape. Tip: use fresh willow as it’s pliable. Then wind the next piece of willow around the circle, adding additional pieces until you have a chunky frame.

You can add more or less willow depending upon the size of wreath you’d like. Once you have the basic frame you can start threading the seeds heads and evergreens that you’ve gathered around it. When adding ‘features’ such as the Hydrangea, use odd numbers as they catch the eye.

Most of the materials can be tucked and threaded through the willow but you may have to tie florists wire around some to ensure they’re kept in place. This can be disguised towards the end by adding more greenery.

That’s pretty much it. Keep building up your design with more plant materials until you have your desired effect. It may take a bit of fiddling around and mind changing but that’s all part of it.  I prefer a more natural look and we don’t have any red berries, but you can add ribbons and bells, dried orange slices, pine cones – whatever takes your fancy.

That’s all there is to it. Finally tie the twine to hang your wreath, stand back and enjoy. The first year I made one Mr G looked at it and said “where did you buy that”… “, I made it” I replied, “oh, I thought it looked too good for that”…. this year he’s learnt his lesson ;)

Postscript: Now my wreath’s been hanging on the door for a couple of hours I’m thinking it needs some Christmassy reds (though I’m not a big fan of red nylon ribbon). As Mr G wont let me use the last red chilli, I’m off to forage a few small red berries from the hedgerows…

If you’d like some more tips and ideas for Christmas wreaths, take a look at the ones we made in the community gardens or for some very elegant door wreaths, hop over to One Bean Row’s post where you’ll find some beautifully crafted ideas.