Our gardens can give us some beautiful gifts this time of year - allowing us to bring the outside right into our homes with foliage and ‘green’ decorations.
By incorporating your garden as a resource, you can create some stylish, beautiful decorative displays for the Festive period.
Excellent use for your winter prunings is to re-arrange bare or lichen-covered twigs in a tall glass vase and use tea light holders or use lengths of trailing ivy and evergreen foliage twisted into swags for looping along mantelpieces or winding around stair bannisters.
Sprigs of aromatic herbs and leaves – rosemary, bay, sage, thyme and anything else you can use – arranged around a big candle on a fluted dish to make a fragrant table centrepiece.
If you can’t get your hands on your Christmas greenery from your garden, visit your local garden centre where you’ll find exactly what you need.
Small Christmas trees can be bought in pots for the kids - so that each year they can be brought inside for the festivities and be part of your Christmas holiday tradition.
Alternatively, you can create your own permanent Christmas decoration in the garden.
Buy a big living Christmas tree and plant it in a good position allowing for growth as the years go by. You need to plant it no later than the beginning of the New Year – January would be perfect.
Stem colours and Textures of trees and shrubs attract the eye and brighten the winter gloom. By planting, for example, dogwoods, snake bark maples, willows and whitewashed brambles, you can create a stunning winter effect in any garden or landscape.
Most winter stems are best planted in groups to maximise their impact and in locations where they can be seen and appreciated. They perform well in full sun and deep, moist, loamy soil so try to avoid shallow and chalky soils.
Dogwood and willow shrubs will need pruning each year in March/April, almost to ground level, to ensure that a fresh crop of the brightest coloured stems is produced next winter.
Mid-December is a time to catch up on some indoor jobs and have a rest, but for those that are out and about the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) has some tips …
Carry on harvesting winter crops such as parsnips, kale, leeks, sprouts. Collect all empty plant pots and seed trays together and wash them ready for next year together with garden tools Collect the leaves that have fallen from the trees for composting as leaf mould Do some early wrapping by covering any large outside containers with bubble wrap, fleece or hessian, to help prevent the pots cracking in the frosty weather.
Don’t tidy your garden up too much! - leave some seed heads and berries on plants for animals and birds to eat. Provide clean water for the birds to drink.
And remember for all your timber requirements for your home and garden leading up to the festive period look no further than the team at Johnsons Timber Supplies Ltd. Call us on 0121 706 0404 or email sales@johnsonstimber.co.uk.