Welcome guests to your home over the festive season by making a Christmas wreath. This dazzling look is made from a colourful mix of fresh and dried flowers, berries and foliage at Scarlet & Violet’s London shop where it’s an Aladdin’s cave of ingredients for wreaths, bouquets and floral displays. Here they tell us how to make your own…
What you will need
Wire wreath frame (approx. 30cm [12in] or size to suit your door)
Sack moss
Reel wire
Florists’ scissors
About 10-12 stems each of:
Scots pine
Cypress
Baby blue eucalyptus
Viburnum berries
Bay
Rosemary
Dried lavender
Preserved fern
Step 1
Buy a wire wreath frame, available from florists and DIY shops, to fit your door, remembering that the size of the finished wreath will be larger than the frame. Fix the end of the wire to the frame, then loop it around several times. Pack the damp moss (wet the moss beforehand if it is not moist) beneath the loops to fix it in place.
Step 2
Continue to make more wire loops around the frame, adding moss as you go, until it is completely covered. Then wrap more wire around the moss to secure it tightly. Leave a length of wire at one end to make a loop (to hang up the finished wreath), before securing it to the back of the frame.
Step 3
Prepare the stems by trimming them down to about 15cm (6in) in length. Select one of each type of flower, berry or leaf and bring them together in your hand to make a small bunch. Attach the reel wire to the frame again, lay the bunch on outer edge of the mossed ring and attach by looping the reel over it, pulling it tightly as you go. Add another bunch next to the first on the ring, so the stems point towards the hole in the middle.
Step 4
Repeat Step 3, overlapping each bunch slightly beneath the previous one until all the moss is covered and you can’t see any wire. Your wreath is now ready to dress up your front door. The wreath will last two weeks or more if you mist it every day to keep the materials moist and fresh.
By changing a few of the ingredients, you can tailor your wreath to suit your colour scheme. Try classic reds with green foliage at Christmas, and use red holly berries, preserved copper beech leaves, heather and hydrangeas, together with the leafy stems above. Or, for a white scheme, try bleached peppercorns, dried statice, poppy seedheads and brunia berries, which look like little snowballs. To add fresh flowers, wire tiny vials onto the frame, disguising them beneath the foliage, and pop in roses or hellebores.
Learn more tricks of the trade by signing up for one of Scarlet & Violet’s workshops at 76 Chamberlayne Road, London, NW10 3JJ.
