Longwood Gardens Holiday Lights

Okay, so if you haven't been to Longwood Gardens during the holidays before and you live within a few hours' drive, just go.  Now.  Enough already.

The best time to get there is around 3:30, so you have an hour and a half or so go explore the grounds.  Then as it gets dusky, check out the beautiful conservatory.  After you've warmed up, your walk out of the conservatory is through the beautiful collection of trees lit with twinkle lights.

Longwood's been lighting their trees like this for years - long before it became a bit more trendy to outline the branches so clearly.  And the work here is done masterfully.

My camera work, what with no tripod and cold fingers...not so much.

Still, hopefully you get the idea and visit this beautiful display!

Okay, that wraps up Planted Cloud for 2011.  Thanks for reading!  Have a wonderful holiday season and see you in 2012!

Living Wreaths

Longwood's conservatory had two beautiful living wreaths I had to share.  They are a bit of a challenge to make at home, but certainly not impossible. 

Above, a wreath with asparagus and maidenhair ferns and orchids.  This is pretty amazing.  Since these orchids are epiphytic, growing on a wreath structure makes perfect sense.  However, the wreath is HUGE - at least 5' diameter.  Scaling this down would be difficult, though possible if you could use smaller Oncidiums.

This here is a favorite of mine, and I don't know why it's not more popular with high-end florists.  It's a wreath made of herbs.  Specifically, parsley, thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage.  Kalanchoe plants provide the red "ribbons."

Though beautiful, I can't see this lasting more than a few weeks in the best conditions (i.e., high, high amounts of sunlight).  But still, what a great Thanksgiving gift to give to someone - a living herb garden/holiday wreath.  And of course, if you live in California or other Mediterranean climates, this would thrive outside!

Longwood Garden's Wildlife Tree

It's awful how little I've been blogging lately.  To be sure, a New Year's Resolution will be to keep on top of the blog!  Luckily for these last days leading up to Christmas, I have a few photos I snapped last January at Longwood Gardens.  Thankfully, I decided to hold on to them to post this year before Christmas, rather than last year after.

First up is this wonderful wildlife tree.  I think this is about the best craft activity school kids could do in the winter, and not just during the holidays.

The ornaments are made out of seed and dried fruit and cinnamon sticks.  They are tethered to the tree with biodegradable string.  Almost all of it is bird food.

They are also quite pretty.

Holiday Wreaths '11

Last year, I posted a how-to on wreathmaking. I know for a fact that at least two people read that post, because this year my mom and my sister asked me for help making their own wreaths.  So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we got together for a little craft party.

I bought all the goods from Michael's crafts, with these requests: My sister wanted to do something unconventional, with non traditional holiday colors. My mom wanted a boxwood wreath (using boxwood cuttings from her garden).  I wasn't sure what I was going to make.

I saw the above for sale at Michael's and liked the idea of it; I decided to use that as a guide, only I'd scale back the....bling.  I bought fake lemons for my mom and pink and blue Christmas balls for my sister. And I bought wine.  Beaujolais Nouveau in fact. (For the record, the food was tasty too - whole wheat pasta in a butternut squash sauce with toasted walnuts and a salad of shaved Brussel sprouts with pecorino and toasted walnuts).

Above, mom gets started with wire, boxwood and wreath frame.

While Tina starts plotting out placement of ornaments on her foam wreath, using toothpicks to do preliminary placement.

Meanwhile, I took a grapevine wreath and painted it with silver shimmer spraypaint.

Tina's progressed beautifully, though I underestimated how many ornaments we'd need.

Mom's placing an "H" ornament of silver bells on the wreath.

Tina's finished wreath is above - it's Katy Perry's dream wreath, candy colored and fun.

Mom's is above -- very traditional, though I like the off center placement of the bow wrapped around cinnamon sticks.

And mine, above.  It really doesn't photograph well, but not counting drying time for paint, it took about ten minutes to make.

It's simply a grapevine wreath, with silver and red "berries" wired into it.  I would have added more gilt perhaps, but in person it's quite nice.

Decorating...

Last summer, I was teaching Abies concolor (white fir) to my students.  I was extolling the plant's virtues, in comparison to Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens glauca), noting on how much softer the needles were and encouraging the students to smell the lemony scent on their own.  As I was wrapping up this introduction, I mentioned, "You can even make wreaths or boughs with its branches during the holidays."

My students stared at me curiously, mouths agape, and I actually processed what had just come out of my mouth.

"Wow," I laughed, "That was a real Martha Stewart moment."

I'm not a particularly crafty type -- despite years making holiday decorations like wreaths and topiaries at various plant nurseries, or my repeated Valentine's Days spent working at a florist.  I appreciate the skill and talent involved, but who has the time?

This year however, I planted about 30 boxwood (Buxus microphylla and B. sempervirens) at my folks' place in Virginia, and they all needed pruning.  It seemed like a waste not to make something out of the clipped branches.   

This wreath (and one other one) was made in a fevered bout of ambition -- I had the clippings and dammit if I wasn't going to finish this project, stat.  So as I sat on the living room floor of my parents' house, with the clipped branches spread out on an old bedsheet and bad '80's movies on TV (Shelley Long, anyone?), I furiously wired bundles of boxwood to a frame and I failed to take a single photo of the process.  If you're interested in making your own, Cottage and Vine has a great post with pics of the process and materials needed.

I used some old pear ornaments and hot-glued them to the wreath to add some interest, but you could also use small lemons.  I prefer the simplicity of a wreath like this one, and my folks' house has some Williamsburg-ish vocabulary in the architecture which called for something understated and classic.

Later that weekend, when my fingertips were still a little raw from repeated contact with florist wire, I was at a Wegman's and saw boxwood wreaths on sale for $17.99.  Next year I may just buy them.