subscribe | advertise | about | contact | home

Great Garden Gifts
by Ann Lovejoy

Instead of giving lavish gifts, our family donates to favorite charities and exchanges fun stocking stuffers (books, music, chocolate). In addition, my kids and I always make garden wreaths for family and friends. Immediately after Thanksgiving, my neighborhood nursery, Bainbridge Gardens, fills a greenhouse with wreath machines. They carry a delicious assortment of greenery by the pound, from dark fir and berried juniper to plain or variegated cedar and holly, as well as lovely berries and cones. You can bring your own makings or mix and match their materials with your own.

Even at this season, most gardens offer lots of trimmings, from dried hydrangea heads and rosy sedum to glossy salal and snowberry. Even the dreaded Scotch broom adds a wonderfully punky texture to evergreen wreaths. Bundles of lavender, thyme, rosemary and sage herbs add color and scent, while little red (or yellow, or orange) hot peppers add pizzazz.

The cheerful wreath-making space buzzes with happy chatter all day long. Neighbors and old friends get together for a few hours, reminiscing and catching up as they make their holiday gifts. Moms and small children debate the use of prickly holly berries and unusual items like dried slugs. (When gilded, they can be kind of cute.)

The nursery gift shop stocks lots of lovelies to add on, from feathery little birds and tiny apples to luscious ribbons and glittering snowflakes, with hot glue guns to keep everything in place. The nursery’s New Rose Cafe offers hot chocolate, lattes, soup and hot pizza to restore weary wreath makers, or you are welcome to bring your own goodies.

If your local nursery does not have wreath machines for customer use, look for wire wreath frames at hobby shops or florists. To use these, cut greens in bundles, binding each with fine florists wire. Wire the bundles to the wreath form, overlapping each to hide the wired stems. This makes beautifully bushy wreaths, and anything you like, from pinecones to tiny gardening gloves and infant tools or watering cans (usually sold as tree ornaments), can be wired on as well.

Friends with fireplaces love Yule logs. Trim small logs with holly, cedar and fat ribbons, using long wood staples from the hardware store. Kids love this project, especially using the hammer. Do not be tempted to use a hot glue gun instead of wood staples. When it burns, the glue releases toxins that can affect anybody with chemical sensitivities for several days. (It’s also not good for small children, older people, or anybody with a compromised immune system.)

My young children loved to make holiday moss baskets, lined with plastic and stuffed with pre-chilled bulbs from the nursery or grocery store floral department. Look for unusual baskets and bowls in thrift stores or antique shops and fill each with fluffy long-fibered sphagnum moss. Add forced bulbs, winter pansies, primroses, or mini roses, with fancy soap or lotion, herb teas or bundles of homegrown herbs for garnish.

Pre-chilled hyacinths and paperwhite narcissus bulbs come into flower in just a few weeks, as do plump amaryllis bulbs. Hide their plastic pots in decorative baskets or bowls for holiday giving. Remove glittery paper from poinsettia, cyclamen, and azaleas and slip them into baskets, filling gaps with sphagnum moss. Any or all of these simple ideas will make an elegant and effortless gift that will long outlast the holidays.

To register for Ann Lovejoy’s garden design workshops or intentional knitting classes to benefit the Harmony Hill cancer retreat programs, visit the Web site at harmonyhill.org/retreats/lovejoy or call 360-898-2363.

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company