December is all about decorating for me. I usually have several craft projects going at once. Right now, I’m working with all the small shells I brought back from Mexico.
My poor relatives; after so many years, their walls are covered with art projects. But they always look forward to one of my wreaths to brighten up the front door or an inside wall.
I make several styles of wreath. The quickest and easiest is made by attaching dried hydrangea flowers to a grape vine wreath or a metal frame. Even a coat hanger can be bent to make a frame.
If you have grapes or honeysuckle vines, you can make a frame yourself. Coil several 3 to 6 foot lengths of vine together, then wrap with more vines until you get a wreath at the thickness you want. Allow the wreath to dry. Then, attach the flowers with thin floral wire. You don’t even have to cover a natural wreath frame completely, and if your hydrangea blossoms aren’t completely dry when you harvest them, you can finish them off inside.
I also tuck hydrangea flowers into my Christmas tree and use some to decorate an evergreen outside.
Search the forest
From the redwood canopy to the forest floor, we are surrounded by an abundance of foliage, berries and cones that make beautiful holiday decorations.
Choose long-lasting foliage from junipers, southern magnolias, redwoods and pines. Deodar cedar and spruce drop their needles too quickly. Be sure to prune to a well-placed branch that is at least a third as big as the one you are pruning.
Boxwood, citrus leaves, English laurel, red-twig dogwood branches and camellia leaves also hold up well in a wreath or swag.
Berries for color
Berries provide color in the winter garden, food for birds and other wildlife and a pretty accent in wreaths, swags and arrangements indoors.
English holly is a classic, but stems of cotoneaster, iris foetidissima and nandina berries will hold up well indoors for 10 days or more. Toyon, a California native shrub, is covered with red berries at this time of year, which look beautiful against the handsome green foliage. If the robins don’t get them, the berries also hold up well inside.
For best berry production, clip branch tips lightly after berries finish but before buds form. Good berry-bearing plants for outdoor color are strawberry tree, crabapple, beautyberry, Hawthorn tree, pyracantha and skimmia.
Poinsettia for the home
Poinsettias, the classic Christmas favorite, also hold up well inside, either as a cut flower or a living plant. It’s too cold here in the mountains for them to survive outside at night, usually.
They need a very bright spot in the house, and make sure to allow the soil to dry slightly, but not completely, between watering. Deprive them of either of these requirements and the lower leaves will yellow and drop. Also, be sure they aren’t sitting in water at the bottom of the container.
Poinsettias are brittle, but if you break off a branch, sear the end of the stem with a flame and it will hold up quite well in a vase or arrangement.
But aren’t poinsettias poisonous? Ohio State University conducted extensive research and concluded that although poinsettia leaves and flowers might give you a stomachache if you ate them, they wouldn’t kill or seriously hurt you. With that in mind, you should still keep poinsettias out of the reach of small children.
Happy holidays to all my faithful readers.
Jan Nelson, a landscape designer and California certified nursery professional at Plant Works in Ben Lomond, will answer questions about gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact her at
ja******@ao*.com
or JanNelsonLandscapeDesign.com.
