Make your own organic Christmas decorations

THERE are so many bits and pieces from the garden you can use to make festive decorations, from Christmas tree clippings as a base for traditional wreaths, to variegated holly with berries, crab apples, poppy seedheads, euonymus and cones.

“Making your own organic Christmas decorations won’t cost a fortune and is a lovely way to spend some festive family fun time together,” says plant grower Mike Kitchen, Rocket Gardens plant nursery founder.

His step-by-step guide shows you how to make natural-looking decorations in minutes:

FESTIVE CANDLES

You will need:

Candle
Holly
Red berries
Hessian material
Gardening twine
Glue gun or safety pins
Scissors

Step by step:

1. Cut a strip of hessian to fit around your candle and attach it together at the back with a glue gun or safety pin.

2. Wrap the gardening twine around the hessian and tie into a pretty bow at the front.

3. Take your foliage and tuck in behind your bow.

You could also create a small foliage arrangement, bunched together with floristry wire and tuck this in behind your bow to spruce up your candle further.

ROSEMARY SNOWFLAKES

You will need:

4 sprigs of Rosemary (all measuring roughly the same length)
Gardening twine
Floristry wire
Scissors

Step by step:

1. Using two sprigs of rosemary each time, place the sprigs together to form a cross shape.

2. Use the floristry wire to bind the two sprigs of rosemary together in the centre of each cross.

3. Place two crosses together and form a snowflake shape.

4. Using floristry wire, bind the two crosses together in the centre.

Want to create a set of snowflakes? Cut your sets of four sprigs of rosemary into varying sizes to create different sized snowflakes. Use gardening twine and tie to one of the sprigs on the snowflake and then you will be able to hang your snowflakes in your window, fireplace, staircase or on your Christmas tree.

You could also make a pine cone star by gluing the base of five cones to form a star shape, wrapping raffia around it, between the cones, leaving enough to make a loop from which to hang the star, and add holly sprigs and berries to the centre with floristry wire or glue.

NATURAL PLACE SETTINGS

You will need:

Stem of bay, stem of holly and a couple of sprigs of rosemary
Floristry wire
Gardening twine
Scissors

Step by step:

1. Select a stem of bay, a stem of holly and a couple of sprigs of rosemary 2. Cut them to size.

3. Arrange them how you want them to look when bunched together. Keep the foliage facing forwards.

4. With floristry wire, bind the bunch of foliage together.

5. Go over this wire by wrapping the twine over the top and forming a pretty bow at the front. You can completely cover the stems with the twine or leave some showing, it’s up to you.

Attach a personalised tag to each one and use them as place settings at your Christmas dinner table.

POT PIZZAZZ

It’s easy to make pots your centrepiece, using simple terracotta pots and saucers filled with dry rice. Place a coin in the bottom of the pot to stop the rice from falling through the drainage hole, then place a tall, slim candle in the pot and fill with rice up to around 3cm from the top of the pot. Then dress the top of the pot with foliage and berries, such as pyracantha, cotoneaster and ivy.

You can also make mini wreaths to hang in the house made from pliable cornus and willow sticks made into circles and secured with floristry wire, then add berries, beech nuts and pine cones to the circle and hang it over doors or hooks with festive ribbon.

If you don’t have suitably festive foliage growing in your own garden, Rocket Gardens supply a Natural Decorations Box containing holly leaves on branches, ivy, bay leaves, mistletoe, fir cones and more. Choose between a Standard (£19.99) or large (£29.99). Available from rocketgardens.co.uk

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT: WINDOWSILL HERBS

Your herb garden may be looking a bit sorry for itself at this time of year, but you can still have the fresh taste of herbs by growing some on your windowsill indoors.

If you have mint or chives in the garden, dig up some roots to force on a warm windowsill.

Soon enough, they will start growing again.

For a really easy life, buy pots of fresh herbs from the supermarket and they should keep growing if you water them and keep cutting them little and often.

It's also easy to grow herbs indoors from seed, including annuals such as chervil, coriander, basil and parsley.

Just sow them thinly in pots and let them grow. Don't worry about pricking them out, just thin the seedlings if they are really overcrowded.

The secret with windowsill herbs is to keep cutting them once they are big enough. Don't let them flower or the leaf production - which is what you need for your cooking - will grind to a halt.

BEST OF THE BUNCH: EUONYMUS

WHILE autumn may produce the best results for the deciduous varieties of euonymus, such as E. alatus, grown for its red autumn foliage, evergreen varieties of this shrub are invaluable, both to add all-year interest in the border and as a great contrasting feature in winter pots, alongside winter heathers, pansies and dwarf conifers.

Euonymus will grow in all sorts of soils in both sun and partial shade. Variegated types are the most noticeable, including E. japonicus ‘Aureopictus’, which has yellow leaves with a green rim and ‘Ovatus Aureus’, which has a yellow rim.

As well as making great ground cover plants, some types can be used as climbers, clinging like ivy, such as the silver-edged variety E. fortunei ‘Silver Queen’, which reaches up to 3m (10ft) against a wall, while other tall-growing specimens can be used for hedging. Variegated types prefer full sun and little or no pruning is required, although you may have to give them a good trim in May and early autumn.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

• Plant bare-root and container grown roses and transplant any established roses you want to resite.
• Create an inexpensive hedge by taking hardwood cuttings and inserting them directly into the growing site.
• Prune autumn-flowering shrubs over three years old as they finish flowering.
• Drain surface pumps in the pond and have them serviced if necessary. Or else clean, dry and grease before storing.
• If you haven’t already done so, put a layer of sharp grit on the surface of your rockery to stop alpines becoming waterlogged.
• Pot up cyclamen sown in late summer for a good show next year.
• Clean gladioli which were lifted and tied in bundles or placed in boxes to dry in the autumn. Force the old corm from beneath the new with your thumb nail, pull off the dried leaves and story in a dry, frost-free place.
• Lift rhubarb crowns which you intend to force and leave them exposed to frost for two weeks before bringing them in to the glasshouse or shed. They can then be packed in boxes using soil, watered and then blacked out.
• If you have climbers, check your guttering and cut back anything blocking it.