Garden Centre

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Garden Flowers - Planning for Christmas

I’m wandering around the garden this week with secateurs in hand and a gleam in my eye. I’m planning my Christmas decorations.

There are a number of ways you can guarantee fresh flowers for Christmas without paying a fortune to the florist for them. You can force bulbs like narcissus and Amaryllis, and I intend to be doing that next year when the greenhouse is finally installed or you can grow flowers that will be at their best in December, which is a lot easier than it sounds, because Winter Jasmine, Witch Hazel and Tinus are all lovely hardy shrubs and trees that simply thrive on bad weather. Finally you can preserve flowers, leaves and seeds by a variety of means. I have taken seed heads from some plants and hung them upside down in the shed to dry and in the next few weeks I shall be giving them a light spray with gold paint and using them to make wreaths and place settings. I’ve also got a number of palm leaves in mind to cut fresh from the palm tree to use as backgrounds for smaller decorations to be hung on the internal doors of the house - they will have dried ivy leaves stuck to them, with a centre of bright poinsettias.

What I’m doing right now is preserving the last summer flowers with glycerine. You have to buy special liquid glycerine from a craft shop and heat it according to the directions which can vary. Then you slide the stems of mature branches or flowers (note mature – young growth doesn’t have enough fibrous interconnections to work with this method) into the liquid and leave for up to three weeks. You end up with perfectly preserved and pliable flowers – often a little darker than their original colour but otherwise as natural as if you’d just picked them.

Dried flowers courtesy of Elizabeth Tritippo at Flickr

Labels: christmas decorations, garden flowers, preserving flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:01 PM

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