Every year, The Garden Club of Long Valley decorates the wreaths you see at the municipal buildings in town....at Town Hall, the Library, the Police Station, the Historic Society Museum and others.
If you’re interested in creating a design for your home, it’s easy. For the wreaths we do for the Garden Club, we start out with plain, basic wreaths – the kind you see at supermarkets, box stores or farm stands. As with all things, you get what you pay for, so go for the ones at the farm stands…they’re fresher and have more variety.
To the basic wreath we add ribbon, different greens for depth and texture, and berries, pine cones and branches for visual interest.
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Adding your own greens and branches into a wreath is a snap. Just cut them to a size appropriate to the wreath you’re working with, and push the branches into the wreath so they’re going in the same direction as the existing branches. Spruce and white pine branches are everywhere now, but cedar, juniper and holly will add depth and interest to the design. Andromeda and rhododendron are also great additions to a wreath or planter – the flower heads of the Andromeda add a “fluffiness” and the leaves of the rhododendrons are “bold” against the finer needles of the other greens. You can also add deciduous tree branches - white Birch or the Winterberry Hollies (the ones with the bright red berries) - the same way.
Pine cones and flower pods can be added by putting some wire around them, placing them where you want to go on the wreath, and then fastening the wire around the center of the wreath. This is what usually takes the longest…experimenting with the placement and then checking on it from a few steps back to see if everything’s looks “right”. Symmetrical is great, but if traditional is not your thing, it can be fun to mix up the balance of materials and come up with an asymmetrical design.
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Finish it off by adding the ribbon. There are all kinds of ribbon choices available, but if you’re looking for something that’s going to show up from a distance, bright red can’t be beat. Darker colors, while beautiful up close, get lost from afar.
Most of all…have fun being creative with your use of materials. Happy Holidays!
