Dreaming of a green Christmas
There’s more to Christmas than baubles and tinsel, says Lia Leendertz. She’s been raiding her garden for flowers, fruit and foliage to make the festive season more affordable and planet-friendly
Christmas is synonymous with overindulgence and a groaning belly. We think we’re going to be able to hold out, have a more restrained festive season, but then we crack at the last minute. We buy too much, eat too much and spend the first weeks of January wracked with guilt as we try to cram leftover packaging and wrapping paper into the recycling box, and ourselves into our trousers.
For those of us concerned about our carbon footprint and our bank balance, Christmas excess can all start to feel a bit incompatible, and there’s a strong urge to draw the curtains and pass the season like a hermit.
However, there is another way. I’ve found that Christmas is a celebration that lends itself surprisingly well to an environmentally-friendly, DIY approach. Think, for instance, of the traditional Christmas lunch – turkey with all the trimmings: potatoes, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, carrots, maybe a cauliflower if you’re feeling fancy, plus a bit of gravy. Nearly every mouthful can be grown in our own gardens or sourced in the UK, easily available from fields and farms within a few miles of every home, even in the depths of winter.
Deck the halls
Little bunches of garden-gathered materials, such as conifer, holly, hawthorn or rose hips, with pieces of dried Hydrangea flowerheads make a cute tree or gift decoration
It’s the same with the majority of our decorations. We don’t deck our halls with strelitzias, gerberas and lilies flown in from a southern hemisphere summer, but rather use holly, ivy and mistletoe, all of which are happily weathering our midwinter climate outside right now, and look perfect brought indoors. It can be really magical to replace some of the sparkly tinsel and shiny wrapping paper with home-grown alternatives – harking back to more traditional ways of decorating; I appreciate the gathered bits all the more for having grown them or tracked them down myself. Plus there’s the added benefit that after everything is over, it can all be bundled into the
There are so many ways to extend a home-grown, environmentally-friendly aesthetic to your own plans. Take a bit of time to scour your garden or local hedgerows armed with a bag and pair of secateurs and you’ll quickly have yourself a sack full of interesting shapes and colours: pillowy heads of spent hydrangea flowers; spiky seedheads of echinacea, eryngium, teasel and love-in-a-mist; bright sprigs of rose hips, haws, cotoneaster and pyracantha berries; pine cones and bunches of acorns and acer keys; and the shapely pods of honesty and poppy. Gather some colourful stems of willow and dogwood if you can find them, too.
Avoid spraying these treasures with gold or silver spray paint: you’ll lose their natural beauty and they’ll be uncompostable. Instead, invest in some pretty ribbon to bunch them together and hang them, perhaps in little posies – a seedhead, a stem, a bunch of hips... Coloured willow, bamboo or dogwood stems look delightful fashioned into little stars or hearts to hang on the tree. And the added beauty? You can simply untie everything at the end of the season and save the ribbon for another time!
Lia’s favourite home-grown Christmas gifts
Individual style
I’ve always loved a wreath, pinned to the front door as a festive welcome for friends and family, and since learning of their pagan origins, I try to make my own. Wreaths are truly ancient, possibly originating in the Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia. It’s thought the circle represents the wheel of the year – reassuring us in these darkest days that winter will end; we just have to hold on tight. Evergreens have a similar function: something living and green when all around looks dead.
Wreaths are easy and satisfying to make, depending almost completely on the sort of foliage that’s most probably growing at the end of your garden. Make your own wreath base by bending stems in a circle or start off with a shop-bought wire or twig wreath. Simply wrap a little florist’s wire around it to help you tuck in stems, and begin weaving your plant material in. Flexible ivy is one of the best plants to cover the base, then I weave in highlight plants – think stems of bright conifers, seedheads and red or yellow berries.
Some of the best wreaths I’ve seen are the simplest designs – cotoneaster berries with a few sprigs of
Colourful stems of willow, Pyracantha berries and green or purple sage leaves
Centrepiece finished with a pretty ribbon and some rose hips
These wonderful wintry ingredients are also perfect for making a table centrepiece, so pick plenty! Keep some in a deep bucket of water in a sheltered spot outdoors until Christmas Eve. A coil of ivy or other greenery around a pillar candle on a dish, decorated with a few berries and seedheads, looks beautiful.
When it comes to the tree, I know it may seem an environmental crime to cut one down, but real Christmas trees are actually fairly ecologically sound. They’re grown to be cut – a crop just like cut flowers – and during the years they’re in the ground they sequester carbon just like any other tree. The big environmental cost comes in transporting them, so try to find a local Christmas tree farm. You also need to dispose of them in the right way – many councils offer collections, shredding and
Finishing touches
Decorate plain parcels with a sprig of holly or bunch of berries and a bow
A large amount of wrapping papers and Christmas cards are laminated or impregnated with plastics or glitter, meaning they’re impossible to recycle. I’ve been using plain brown paper for a few years now and I love the look of it, especially fastened with a pretty ribbon, but you can jazz it up more with some potato-printed patterns as well. One of my favourite tips is to tuck little sprigs of garden bits into the ribbons. A sprig of spruce or bunch of berries makes a plain parcel look pretty indeed; rosemary or dried lavender add seasonal fragrance, too.
These tricks work just as well for home-made cards. Cut out images and phrases from old cards and stick them onto a new piece of card, perhaps made using recycled paper you’ve impregnated with seeds, for planting next year. These thoughtful, creative cards reduce costs and waste, and perfectly complement your environmentally-friendly home-grown Christmas.
This page is an adaptation of an article published in the December 2022 edition of The Garden magazine, free to RHS members every month when you join the RHS.
