At this time year your garden has all the elements and can provide all the inspriation to create some great home-made Christmas decorations.
Using your existing garden plants a few simple shop purchased decorations, you can create your very own Christmas decorations to suit your own home style.
Some suitable plants are Conifers, Euonymus, sedum. ivy, holly cotonester, pyrcantha, fir cones and rose hips.  One of the easiest ways to create your own decorations with these plants is to create fireplace garland, or Christmas wreath.
The Fireplace garland is one of the simplest Christmas decorations to create, simply by using a shelf above a fireplace to create a natural looking seasonal decoration.  The key is to use 3 or 4 items, such as candles and baubles to give the decoration a structure.
Click here to download the ‘how to pdf on how to create a fireplace garland’.

The Christmas wreath is slightly more time consuming but still quite simple, starting with 6 willow withies they can be twisted together to create the foundation framework for the Christmas wreath.  
Click here to download the ‘how to pdf on how to create a Christmas wreath’.

• Collect the greenery and seedheads you would like to include.
• Separate these into piles as the garland will be built in layers.
• Protect the surface you are decorating with a coated paper, such as Christmas wrapping paper because the sap from the cuttings may damage the surface being decorated.  This paper will not be visible once your garland has been constructed.
• Decide on the placement of the candles to provide a focal point to work with. Its worth experimenting with several different position to create the effect you are after.
• The first foliage to provide the base will be the conifer cuttings, lay these on a diagonal bias overlapping slightly.
• Next add the softer foliage such as ivy or euynomus, then the seed heads of sedums or poppies before adding the holly, which is less pliable.
• With the garland taking shape and the green base completed the shop bought baubles can be placed alongside fir cones.  

How to create a xmas wreath

• First cut some Willow Withies ideally they should be about a metre long and should be 5 to 8 mm in diametre
• Next run them through your hands bending them to increase the supelness in the withies
• Take one of the withies and create a circle or loop by wiring the two ends together to form the circle or loop.
• Then add more of the willow withies twisting them aroung the original circle and wiring the end togther