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Wreaths
I am not now nor have I ever been a flower arranger. Last year, however, I took a lesson in wreath-making from designer Louise Kappus. The result pleased me so much that I put up with a lot of teasing because I refused to remove it from our front door until June.
The wreath was a simple affair: spruce cuttings as a background with dried amaranth, pomegranates and a big bow to add dash. It looked pretty good. Encouraged by this modest success, I'm feeling creative again. Here we are on the cusp of winter when everything in this last incredible flush has made it easy to see what can be whacked back and brought indoors for wreaths and vases.
The cheapest and easiest way to make a wreath is to start with one of those ready-made foam or metal forms. Bang nails around the circle and wind pliable vines such as Virginia creeper and wild grape around the nails. Weave loosely enough to lift away from the nail form and, voilà,you have a good-looking base. These things last for years and you can change the add-ons every season.
The most dramatic background I can think of are the silvery stems of artemisias such as 'Silver King,' 'Silver Queen' or 'Valerie Finnes.' They should be cut back now, especially if they are running wild in your garden. Leave enough on them to hold the snow for winter patterns.
Another background plant is ivy. It moves steadily about the garden, and I view it as a resource always available for decorating. A simple grape circle covered with ivy is enough to make a graceful welcome on the front door.
To give texture and make a design, nip about taking bits and pieces from shrubs and vines. (But don't strip them; they are essentially there for birds to eat.) Bittersweet, an incredibly rampant vine, is part of the glorious autumn bounty. Its orange bead-like berries have split open and look like jewels. Callicarpa or Beauty berry, one of the most decorative of all garden shrubs with its magnificent deep, rosy-lilac berries, also can be added. Cotoneaster with bright red berries is another good one. As is Ampelopsis, or porcelain vine, with its delicate turquoise berries for added charm.
If you were smart enough to save and dry the blooms of such lovely plants as yarrow, peonies, tansy and cardoon, these can be added to a wreath. Goldenrod along with Sedum 'Autumn Joy' look perfect together. They will go brown, but then so does everything else. Pomegranates are coming on the market, and they dry to a tantalizing colour. Annuals such as celosia and spiky blue salvias also dry surprisingly well.
Ornamental grasses, at their supreme moment right now, look magnificent alone in a vase or with sedums added for a superb combination.
The newest thing to me is a living wreath. In this case, you start with a commercial base of foam, sphagnum moss and soil, and you add wonderful container plants such as echeverias, sempervivums, sedums and any of the other succulents you can find in the garden or florist shop. But you must keep them watered.
Echeveria is a wonderful frost-tender annual that can be recycled into a wreath. Sedums are hardy, and cutting off bits and sticking them into soil re-establishes them very quickly. It's a great way to add to the number of plants you have. Try S. acre, S. spurium and S. spathulifolium, which you'll find lurking about the garden. Even that dusty old jade plant on the top shelf can be made into a wreath.
All you need to do with any of these plants is to take a 5-to-7.5-centimetre cutting from the tip of a branch. With plants such as echeveria and sempervivums, just take some of the little "chicks" they throw off and use them in the design.
There are lots of books on the market on how to make wreaths, and I was charmed by Teddy Colbert's The Living Wreath (Gibbs Smith).
Stop looking for Critter Ridder to keep squirrels from bulbs. Apparently there's a labelling problem, and it isn't allowed into Canada any more. Too bad; it seemed to work.
Copyright Marjorie Harris, 2005
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