Bringing inside, the outside

Decorating at Christmas from your garden

Dec 14, 2024

Despite being the least amount of growth in gardens and across the countryside in darkest December, there is no other time when we are more likely to want to bring the outside in than at Midwinter.

In fact, perhaps it is precisely because we are in the darkest part of the year, decorating with glossy scented greens is so appealing?

In deep midwinter, when most of our time might be indoors, I am sure of that the desire to be connected to the natural world, outside, runs deep.

I maintain it is essentially human to do so.

The romans celebrated Saturnalia by making wreaths, or crowns with laurel. To symbolise the circle of the year, no start or finish as such, made with evergreen shining glossy leaves, robust plants of strength when the days are their shortest.

We have made these for millennia.

The Romans used laurel since it grew in abundance, was soft to work with as a crown. I am sure they wouldn’t have used holly in the same way! This shape has endured but using German pines with English holly and ivy. This is a Dickensian image of Christmas but if you don’t have those growing in your space what else can you use to symbolise that Midwinter greenery that speaks of Christmas?

Here are lots of ideas for decorating at Christmas, with plants you might have in your garden or find in a hedgerow.

It seems crazy to me to use material flown or travelled anyway to celebrate a season. And missing the point of gathering material from around your home to bring in. Of course, if you have a mature estate with ancient shrubs and trees, it is much easier to find foliage. Here in Audley End Village, I can look wistfully across the walls at ‘the big house’ and it’s abundant gardens. I can look. But I can’t cut. When you don’t have a stately house and garden to cut from, how do you bring the season indoors?

What do you have in your garden?

Look at your plants a little differently. Last year I challenged myself to make a wreath from what was growing in our garden. Fortunately, then1, I had some mature shrubs, and I simply cut what looked good - dogwoods, hazel, cotoneaster with it’s rainbow leaves still attached, eucalyptus and rosemary and then some pine from the old Christmas tree plantation that flanks the field plot. But it certainly isn’t traditional and a little wild like a Catherine wheel firework.

A wreath made from garden gathered branches and succulents.

Done in the truest spirit, foraging is almost traditional at Christmas.2 My mantra for considerate foraging is that ‘you can’t see I have been’, cutting carefully, deep into the plant and leaving plenty for others, for wildlife, for food and shelter, for pollinators still feeding in winter and especially, for the plant itself.

If you can’t do this, then don’t cut.

Growing very fast each year, holly and ivy are an obvious choice, it can be a useful exercise to cut back these plants, and why not recycle through the home as decoration? In fact, anything that is growing abundantly is a great material to use as decoration, whatever the event or season.

In other hedgerows and woodlands, you might find branches of hawthorn, euyonymus (spindle), rose hips and larch. These little berried bare branches or knobbly cones add structure and texture to gathered greens.3

Think glossy and contrasting shaped leaves. It could be anything, box, sarcococca, choisya or laurels. I love arbutus, the strawberry tree with orange red hanging baubles.

Greenery inside, shines, reflecting lamp light on these shortened days.

Herbs are great material too. Bay trees often need a trim now and these branches together with sage and rosemary have a wonderfully uplifting scent and will complement each other gathered on the fireplace or tucked into shelves of books. I’ve used these with golden lime crab apples decorations for a kitchen garden gathered display. Of course these will dry out in warm homes, then can be saved in jars for cooking.

For a floral display, there are scented blossoms too. Buy cyclamens and hellebores from your local nursery, and slip into terracotta pots, trim with moss. Plant back outside when the celebrations are over, or gift at New Year. I’m still planting paperwhites for indoor flowering that will shoot up with fresh growth and flower into January. White blooms with glossy green leaves are essential combinations for December.

If like me, you don’t have an orchard with mistletoe hanging off lychen covered branches, order some sprigs from Able & Cole or a box from Kiss me Mistletoe to make a full globe, tuck into arrangement or perhaps a wedding centrepiece. The Celts valued mistletoe for its healing properties and it is symbolic of vitality. In the language of flowers, it represents ‘overcoming difficulties’. We’d all like some of that protection.

But there are so many other materials you can use. I’ll beginning Christmas gathering from right back in the summer and collecting material to dry. Panicum grasses are cut and tied up in the studio in huge bunches. These are like little fibre optics in wreaths and on tables, (used green in bouquets and arrangements throughout the summer.) A must have for any cut flower garden, together with other grasses and seed heads like poppies and clematis ‘old mans beard.

And flower heads of strawflowers, echinops and alliums give structure, and a different vibe. One of Victorian, faded antiqued pale decoration in direct contrast to glossy evergreens - I don’t mix and match but choose my scheme. In the hedgerows there might be nipplewort, teasels and hogweed; now dried back, safe to cut. Here we grow honesty simply for the sparkling paper branches at Christmas and I bring out saved pine cones year after year.

For a little craft, I have used gold leaf sheets, egg white as glue, decorated walnuts and spices with sparkle. I love studding oranges with cloves. No, not native but local if I swipe from the fruit bowl. Evocative nonetheless with the orange juice scenting the cloves and wafting with optimism and joy on these darkest of days. In fact, I might make some of these today.