FIONA CUMBERPATCH is getting excited for Christmas, using her small town garden in Lincolnshire as the inspiration for decorations and seasonal treats
The last tulip bulb is planted, all my empty flowerpots are stacked away for another year, and the mini greenhouse is sheltering tender plants and seedlings until spring. Which means I have time to get on with my seasonal prep.
I love foraging for greenery that I can use to decorate my home, inside and out. Starting in the garden, I cut long bendy stems of honeysuckle to make the basis of a garland for the dresser. Using wire, I attach poppy and allium seedheads that have been drying in my shed and sprays snipped from the blue-green eucalyptus growing in a pot outside the back door. Twisting a string of fairylights around it and adding silver baubles makes the garland sparkle.
A walk in the country is the perfect opportunity to gather holly, ivy and anything else I can forage for a seasonal swag. I’ve found a clever way to make the swag, using a large potato, and it’s honestly a genius trick as all the water and starch in the potato keeps the greenery fresh! Use a skewer to make a hole in a potato from side to side, about three-quarters of the way up. Push strong wire through, securing the ends into a hanging loop. Now take some greenery with sturdy stems and use secateurs to cut across each stalk to form a sharp point. Push each stem into the potato as far as it will go, until you can no longer see the potato. Keep lifting the potato up by the wire as you go, to check the swag is a circular symmetrical shape. And finish by wiring orange slices and a ribbon to the greenery for an opulent effect. I’ll be hanging mine on the front door for a festive flourish.
For a garden-inspired table setting, I raid my rosemary plant for sprigs of spicy-scented greenery to tie around napkins with coloured string (nutscene.com has gorgeous colours). Oranges spiked with cloves make a fragrant table centrepiece, and my orange tree, which always flowers
