Monday 21 December 2009

Deck The Halls with Boughs of Cupressocyparis Leylandii..Fa-la-la-la la..

or how about "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana"? No, I know it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, but it does a lovely job of Decking the said Halls, all the same. You don't need to buy your Christmas greenery from a shop or garden centre.If you can manage to spare half an hour or so you can easily put together a lovely wreath for your front door from stuff you can usually find in your garden, or along a hedgerow, or a neighbour's garden. The ubiquitous Leylandii hedge will yield more than enough prunings to make a nice wreath for your front door as well as one for the neighbour in whose garden it's growing. And if you don't have your own shrubbery or hedge, you could always consider raiding the local supermarket car parks where there is often a good supply of shrubbery (far be it from me to lead you along the path of criminality),
Most instructions tell you to start with a base that you have to buy, but I never do. Just find yourself a good selection of reasonably bendy twiggy branches, things like willow, hazel, and more or less any wood produced during  the last summer  will be flexible enough to use. You will need a selection of sticks something like this

plus a roll of wire available from any garden centre, this on is sold as "Garden Wire Light Weight", and is the cheapest and is ideal.


and of course you will be armed with your trusty

secateurs.

Start by binding together your bare branches by winding the wire round and round, making a long "rope" of

flexible twigs.
Use plenty of wire for your first attempt as it will make life easier. When your twig rope is long enough bend it round into a rough circle  shape


and secure with your wire.


Snip off any protruding ends where the wood is too hard to bend and then  push in your branches of leylandii, holly, ivy or any other green stuff you can find, and wind on more wire to secure. Just keep going round and round with the wire and greenery until you're happy with the look. Something like this


I had a bit of trouble finding any red berries in my garden just now, since the birds have cleared up all the available supply, so I will probably get something in red plastic from the decorations box to finish the job, or I might just wire up a few cranberries for the finishing touch.
Fa-la-la-la-la Fa-la-la-laah!

8 comments:

  1. Lovely! So much prettier than some artificial plastic thing!

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  2. Wow - this looks so pretty!

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  3. Great idea and wonderful photos so I can follow along easily. I'm going to try this out and since I don't have any vines except ivy I'll try to wind some small pine branches around.

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  4. Ivy works fine Callie, if you have any of the variegated sort even better.

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  5. Leylandii is an evergreen hedge with thick foliage that can filter out up to 30% of atmospheric pollution. Anytime during the month of May is a best time for pruning a Leylandii hedge. Great Idea!

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