What do you get the person who has everything? A gift from the garden of course! Jackie French shares her favourite homemade Christmas presents.
Christmas used to be a midwinter feast – a time to brighten up the darkest winter with all the good things from the harvest. And somehow – among all the other reasons to rejoice at Christmas – Christmas has always seemed to me to be a celebration of the good things of the earth too.
Make jam:
This isn’t for the fainthearted – jam-making involves lots of glooping hot stuff and perfect timing and a bit of magical chemistry. But if you have a Women’s Weekly cook-book to guide you, you’ll be fine. And December is a great time for fruit – luxurious tiny pots of home-made cherry jam, lashings of plum jam, or ginger and pineapple jam, lemon curd, apricot jam. Trust me – anyone who loves their food will adore genuine home-made jam for Christmas.
A salad in a box or basket:
Take one giant hanging basket, big pot or even old Styrofoam box with holes in the base so the water can drain out. Plant with mixed greens, the sort that can be cut over and over all summer – parsley, mizuna, baby spinach leaves, red cress – have a look at the packets available and choose your favourites. They’ll be ready for presenting about three weeks from sowing – and ready for the first harvest about three weeks after that. Add instructions to place the box in a sunny spot, to keep it moist and feed with soluble plant food every fortnight – and keep cutting, for the more you take, the more greenery will grow.
A Christmas present for the birds:
This is fun for kids to make – and fun watching the birds eat it.
You will need:
an old ice cream container
1 stitch-holder
wild bird seed
a glue labelled ‘non toxic’ and ‘not soluble in water’
1 metre of string
Fill the ice cream container with bird seed. Mix in the glue then QUICKLY press about 30 cm of the string into the middle. Leave overnight to set. Press it out of the container and hang it up in a tree, out of the reach of bird hungry cats.
Pressed flower gifts:
When I was a kid I pressed flowers every school holidays. I used pressed flowers as bookmarks, sent them in ‘thank you for the Christmas present’ letters to relatives (I reckoned that as long as I added a pressed flower I only needed to write two sentences: I hope you are well. Thank you for the lovely bath salts. Love Jackie).
You will need:
flowers or ferns – choose delicate ones like pansies, small or single roses, little daisies, maidenhair fern or geranium flowers. Bulky flowers won’t press well
big books
brown paper, paper napkins or other non-waxy paper
microwave (optional)
Arrange the flowers between the sheets of paper, then slide them into the middle of the books. Leave for about a week till they are pressed and dried out. (If you put them straight into the books they may leave a faint flowery mark on the paper – which I rather like but lots of book owners and all librarians don’t!)
You can also dry flowers and leaves on a piece of absorbent paper in the microwave. These flowers and leaves are dried but not really pressed so they are bulkier and more three dimensional than traditional pressed flowers.
The finer and flatter the plant and the less moisture it contains, the better this method works. Leave the plants in the microwave on low for no more than one minute at a time, repeating this again and again as necessary. Leave at least ten minutes before you open the door to check your plant, as they will still be drying.
Pressed flower cards
You will need:
pressed flowers
glue
Stick the flowers on in whatever pattern you like – and there you are!
Pressed flower candles:
WARNING: kids need supervision to make these or to use them. Never leave candles lit unattended, and wear gloves and long sleeves and non flammable clothes when working with hot wax.
Use a thin layer of melted candle wax to stick the dried flowers or ferns to the candle, and then smooth another thin coat of wax over them with a blunt knife. They look enchanting as they burn.
Pressed flower soap
Use a bit of moist soap to stick the flowers on bars of soap.
A bowl of dwarf succulents
(Succulents are thick fleshed plants. Cacti are succulents, but there are many others, including much prettier ones. Ask for advice on succulents at your local nursery).
You need:
A shallow earthen ware or pottery bowl
Potting mix
A selection of pretty dwarf succulents from the garden centre
Optional: white pebbles to mulch the surface
Fill pot with potting mix. Remove succulents gently from their pots and arrange in the new pot. Water well and wipe the edges of the pot to clean off excess potting mix. You’ll need to add an instruction card: Place in full sun. Water weekly- if you remember.
A big hanging basket of flowers:
I add water-retaining crystals to my hanging baskets. The crystals retain 200 times their weight in water and last for a year or two – just dig more in around the edges of the basket when you need to replace them. They’re wonderful if you are going on holiday – or just never get round to watering your baskets quite as often as you need to.
(N.B. Follow instructions on the packet – more is not better. If you put in too many crystals your pot will look like an erupting gloop-filled volcano as soon as it rains.)
Now choose some punnets of flowers – spreading petunias, alyssum, geraniums/pelargonium’s – whatever you think your loved one will like. Plant, water and keep moist till Christmas Day.
