How To Make A Real Christmas Garland

You may have seen my Christmas garland on my new post yesterday when I featured these amazing Christmas lights from Lights.co.uk, so today I wanted to show you how to make a real Christmas garland yourself, and you can make it easily from the foliage in the garden and some fallen items out on a walk. 

A Quick Video Tutorial Of Making A Christmas Garland

How To Make A Real Christmas Garland 

Once you have your chosen foliage for your real Christmas garland, then give it a soak for 24 hours or so. I am unsure of how long this Christmas garland will last inside, but I will update the post when I know how long mine lasted! 

Soaking the foliage will give the foliage a chance to drink up as much water as it wants, you can always mist the foliage once it’s in place to give it a bit more of a drink. This also is a perfect opportunity to give the foliage for your Christmas garland a wash off, get rid of any little bugs that have been hiding! 

The next day I gave the foliage a chance to dry off on some towels for about an hour before bringing inside. 

What Foliage I Used 

As well as the evergreen conifer cuttings, I used some holly with a few berries on, fallen pine cones, and also some eucalyptus, but I didn’t use this in the end. But you can use whatever type of foliage you want, this is the beauty of building one yourself as you can add whatever you want, or have in your own garden to build it. Hedges need trimming in the Autumn, so make the most of the cuttings. 

What Do You Need 

Well, not a lot really! 

• Wire cutters 
• Garden pruners 
• Thin garden wire
• Thick garden wire

Start Building Your Real Christmas Garland 

Measure out your thick wire to the length you want for your Christmas garland, and get your branches trimmed a little to be able to use the main strongest stems. You want to be able to lay then along flat to the wire to get your base. Fan them out starting from the middle section, and fan out both directions. Overlapping in the middle section, but don’t worry about the natural gap in the middle, you can fill this with smaller pieces of foliage. 

Attach the foliage using the smaller garden wire, wrapping it around the stem, and then wrap around the main wire. Pulling tightly to secure them on. 

Make sure you do this in a few areas along the wire, to keep them secure to the wire and to create some strength to the Christmas garland. 

You can then start to add the smaller stems of foliage into the middle section to build that out and add in smaller sections throughout to build up the thickness.

Move Into Place 

Now it’s time to move it into place, and as I am placing this on a fireplace it doesn’t need loads of wiring in and making sure everything is secure. So carefully lift into place with support all the way along. Then you can just get your pieces of foliage and slide them into the Christmas garland. As it’s not in a sponge or way of watering, you can literally just poke in the stems into place, standing back and looking at where they would fit best. Prune down pieces to fit, and create a fluffy looking real Christmas garland. 

Building Up and Making It Look Pretty 

Now you can add in your other pieces of foliage or decorations once you’ve got your base finished. Trimming the foliage to size, and poking in the holly, and placing the pine cones where you think they look best. 

I purchased these cute little fabric flowers from John Lewis, they’re on a wire with a pincher on the end so you can secure them to anything. I love how it just pulls in the pink walls of the living room and adds a bit of glitter! 

I hope you have fun making your own Christmas garland, I hope this has helped you learn how to make a real Christmas garland and you can create your own beautiful unique fireplace Christmas garland for your own home. Take a look at these realistic garlands if you don’t fancy making one yourself. 

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