Christmas Gardening – Gifts from your Garden

Why not give somebody a potted plant in a hand-painted clay pot? Amaryllis bulbs are extremely easy to grow, look great when in bloom and make a stunning gift for Christmas. Alternatively the ornamental pepper (capsicum annum) is a herbaceous annual, with a densely branched stem that can reach two feet tall and bears small fruit, green when unripe, changing principally to red, although some varieties become brown or purple. It makes a very nice and easy to maintain house-plant although it will die off by the next November, so don’t let your recipient think they’ve killed off a perennial! Still not sure what gardening presents to buy? Well here are a few more great ideas.

Buy a small pine tree and decorate it for the personality of the person you’re giving it to – small baubles and tinsel allied to bags of herbs, spices and cake decorations for a cook. Sample sizes of toiletries, stick on nail jewels and hair-bands for a teenage girl, and pencils, erasers and tubes of paint for an art lover.

Collect seeds from your flowering plants and place them in elegant small envelopes to become gift seed sachets for your gardening friends. You can augment the present with some plant food spikes or a set of labels, if you want to add something ‘purchased’

Make stationery or note cards using pressed flowers and leaves from your garden, or even a journal for a friend featuring plants and flowers from your garden.

Make a fresh wreath using evergreens, acorns, seed-heads, pinecones, flowers and whatever material you have available in your garden and take it to your friends for their front door.

Christmas gardening pressed flowers photograph by Miki James, used under a creative commons attribution licence