Making a Christmas Wreath – How it’s Done

Making a Christmas wreath is a wonderful way to make use of the greenery and berries in your winter garden. And just as it’s satisfying – and environmentally sound – growing flowers for your home, so it has to be good to make your own wreath too?

But when it comes to arts and crafts I’m the world’s worst. Luckily though, I have a very creative and patient friend called Kay. You may recall she helped me make a stone looking trough using hypertufa.

I walked the Camino with Kay and three other walking friends – Bo, Caroline and Desi – and we train every Saturday morning. But when our walk yesterday was threatened by terrible weather, we decided instead to gather and make Christmas wreaths.

So while it’s fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share a blog on how we got on.

Tools and Equipment for Making a Christmas Wreath

• Wire snips
• Secateurs
• Wire wreath frame
• Sustainable moss (you could get it from your lawn if it’s terrible like mine!)
• Thin florist binding wire
• Decorative elements – ribbon, dried fruits, cones, seed pods, baubles etc
• Plant greenery – see below

As far as I could see, plant-wise almost anything goes when making a wreath. Anything that has interesting leaves or berries, tassels, has an interesting shape, arcs gracefully or smells lovely at this time of year will work. For instance among other things we worked with:

Plants to Use

• Holly
• Spruce
• Pine
• Cedar
• Variegated ivy
• Ivy with berries
• Eucalyptus
• Bay
• Rosemary
• Euonymous 
• Garrya Elliptica
• Dried hydrangea heads

Two Tips

If you are going to use actual fresh flowers you will need to make your wreath using moistened florists’ oasis. As otherwise the flowers will dry and drop too quickly. We didn’t do this type of wreath. We used a wire frame and moss.

Whatever plant greenery you choose, you will need a lot more than you think, as you want your wreath to look generous. Kay, Caroline and Desi brought masses of greenery but we only just had enough for the five of us.

5 Steps to Making a Christmas Wreath

OK, so enough of the prep, how do you actually make a Christmas wreath. Well the answer is in five relatively simple steps.

1.Create a Moss Base

Firstly get the wire wreath frame and put a generous layer of moss on it – leaving a space in the middle. Then bind the moss to the frame by wrapping the wire around it. You will need quite a lot of wire as the moss will otherwise drop off!

The moss looked very beautiful on the frame, but it’s just a base, it won’t be visible in your final wreath. So don’t worry too much about how it looks.

When you finish wrapping the wire round, leave a long piece of wire and make a loop with this.

For extra strength, attach a separate piece of wire to your frame at the same point and wrap it around your loop so you have double thickness.

2. Add a Base of Greenery

Next, when making a Christmas wreath you need to add a base of greenery to the ring. This needs to be flattish and plain, as it’s going to be the background plant. So now is not the moment to use something very shaped like holly.

Again you attach it to your mossy ring in a clockwise direction with the wire. Obviously take care not to bind in the leaves or sprays from the greenery as you want to create an attractive, soft, splaying shape. This element will be more visible, so tuck the wire under the branches or leaves as you wrap.

Hang your ring up to take a look at it. I got quite worried at this point as already my incompetence was showing. My wreath looked much fuller on the top left. But I later discovered that there’s lots of scope to tidy and trim later on.

Kay also tried to explain to me (very patiently) that actually I could make use of the imbalance and do a display which had all the action on the thinner, right hand side and not do much to the top left. She tried to demonstrate with a piece of ivy, but I was too clueless to get what she was on about! So marched on in my own merry way. Made all the merrier with the addition of some fizz! Is 9am too early for fizz? Nah!!

3. Add Bunches

With this lovely green base all in place you can now start the fun bit of decorating. Gather mixed bunches of greenery, about 10 inches long, wrap wire around the stems to hold the bunch together. Then, one at a time, using the wire and going in an anti-clockwise direction, lay each bunch on the base, stems down, and attach it at the stems point, using wire. You’re not wiring in the display end of the bunch as you want to have that lovely and loose.

Definitely make one bunch at a time and wire it to your wreath before making the next, as you may want to tweak your plant choices as you see a theme emerge or see an effect you want to create.

The top of the next bunch covers the stems of its predecessor.

If you have two reels of wire you might find it easier. You can leave one permanently attached to your wreath, binding in the created bunches, and use the other to cut off short lengths of wire to create those bunches.

In terms of my plant choices for the bunches, I didn’t go for the holly or anything with bright red berries. I wanted a rather naturalistic wreath.

So I favoured Ivy with and without berries, Bay, Eucalyptus, Rosemary and some gorgeous Garrya Elliptica – otherwise known as the silk tassel bush.

With your final bunch, you are obviously positioning its stems under the first bunch you attached to your wreath.

4. Time to Decorate

Once all your bunches are in place, you can then remove any stray bits that you don’t like and add decorative touches.

Some of the gals added gorgeous bows, dried fruits, bunches of cones and cinnamon sticks all wired together. Others added more red berries to amp up the festive look.

You name it. It’s your wreath so do one that suits you.

I kept the additional touches to a minimum as I was rather slow at doing everything, and I was going for an earthy look. I added a subtle sort of hessian green bow, that’s probably too subtle to be seen. I also used wire to bind together three cones in a cluster – and added a seed pod. Nothing too fancy.

Looking at the gals wreaths I think mine does look a bit drab and probably lacks a festive oomph. But I can always return to it and add some more bits if I’m that bothered. Knowing me, I probably won’t as I’m woefully behind on Christmas preparations and am simply glad to have wreath I made myself on the door!

So here’s a lovely gallery of the finished wreaths..

Making a Christmas Wreath – Our Results

The Front Door Test!

As a final test, here they are on some front doors!

So there you have it. Even I produced a Christmas wreath that I’m semi proud of. So do have a go. It’s a lot of fun and a yet another wonderful excuse to get your hands on some plants. Happy wreath-making!