One of the best things that I have done this year is to be part of the Vegetable Course. We have not only learnt how to grow vegetables but have also eaten a lot of cake, made scarecrows, eaten Jen's pickle, learnt how to make celariac remoulade with Hannah, spread muck, shared seeds and had a graduation ceremony with even more cake. To end our year, instead of a Christmas party, we got together for a Christmas wreath making session led by our esteemed leader, John.

You need a surprisingly large amount of material to start off with but once you have decided what to do you find that you don't need most of it!

This is Jen's pile and we all had very similar amounts. You can see the agapanthus seed heads but we had all sorts:

rosemary

pittosporum

holly- green and variegated

grasses

old man's beard

bay

conifers

teasels

ivy - leaves and flowers

other seed heads from alliums and ceratostigma

the best things were the seed heads from Dawn's camellias

and quite a bit of tacky stuff - gold and silver spray paint, baubles, yesterday's orange peel(!), ribbons and bells.

 

To start off with we stuffed moss into the metal ring and then used string to wind round the ring to hold it in place.

I want to make another wreath for a friend so have ordered these which are what we used and for the moss I am going to rake my lawn and use what I get from that. There will be plenty!

The moss is to keep the whole arrangement damp which will prolong the wreath's life but also hides the metal ring. If you are going to see under the wreath's petticoats then it is better to see moss than the metal wring.

Once the moss is in place you can start to think about the material you want to use.  Put this material together in little bunches, so for instance I had 3 pieces of holly and 1 teasel as a little posy. 

Fix your wire onto the ring and twist it to keep it there and then keeping your wire as one long piece, place the posy on the ring and wrap wire around the stems and the ring three times to hold it in place.

How big these posies are and the angle you place them on the ring determines the size of your wreath. We all started off with the same size of wring but our finished wreaths were very different sizes. In fact, mine was too big for the door when I got it home!

 

 

 

Keep adding these posies all the way around the wreath until you get back to the start. You may have a little gap between the first and last posy, so make a small one and tuck it in.

At this point you can step back and see what else needs to be added in. If you are a minimalist it may be nothing, but if you are like us we then added old man's beard, dried seed heads, bells, plastic grapes, twigs, berries and agapanthus seed heads.

We couldn't believe how different all our wreaths were but they all looked fantastic. I have had to hang mine from a hook in the porch because it won't fit on the door but everyone else's will fit perfectly.

 One ingredient we didn't have was eucalyptus which I think looks really good in a wreath.

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