How do you incorporate plants, seeds, and other material from your garden in your holiday decorations?
Barb Hunting: I pick pine boughs and toyon for the mantle.
Dale Rekus: My new thing this year is to paint jacaranda seed pods gold and wire them onto a wreath as accents.
Suzy MacGillivray: Proteas and pincushions, added to hakea branches and left natural...or they really bling up when spray painted with a silver sheen! I use these tucked into wreaths, and for centerpieces. Add some colored small baubles and you are done. Easy peasy.
Susi Torre-Bueno: I put a lot of silver and/or gold non-breakable ornaments on one small tree near the entrance to our house.
Jason Chen: Most of the decorating I do is in the form of floral arrangements. Using seasonal plant material as well as plant material foraged from your yard or surrounding wildlands. Native salvia seed heads, vines, toyon berries, sage brush—all within reason. Don’t cut more than 1/5-1/4 off a given plant and treat it as you would of your own plants! If there are still seeds that rattle, I’ll dump most of them out in the area before taking the dried stems, and tread carefully!
Also, if you get architectural flowers throughout the year, think ahead. A fresh protea bloom head looks just as nice dried. Proteas, grass heads, thistles, palm and fern fronds...the list goes on. They can also be painted/sprayed to change things up. And when in doubt, glitter and metallics; just don’t tell folks I suggested it.
Russel Ray: This year I splurged and bought a succulent Christmas tree.
Al Myrick: I make living wreaths out of Spanish moss and wire in cotoneaster and pinecones.
Sue Fouquette: We have a woven half basket hanging on the front door in the fall. I will soon change the contents from colored corn cobs and dried grass to Pinus torreyana cones, Punica granatum ‘Wonderful’ fruit, and Laurus nobilis branches. We grew the Torrey pine from seed. The mature pomegranate came with our backyard 30 years ago. We planted the bay tree around that time too. I’ll decorate inside with some of the same. There will be more possibilities for Christmas décor. The many flower spikes of a succulent in the front yard will open soon with pure red.