Action plan: CIAR BYRNE's essential jobs for your garden this week
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TIPS FOR A FESTIVE FORAGE. The best sort of Christmas decoration is one that you have foraged from your garden, or with permission from other outdoor spaces. Our garden is overrun with ivy, and both the leaves and the flowers can be used in arrangements.
![[If your pond does ice over, never break the surface of it as this stresses fish]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/15/22/93175495-14195711-image-a-52_1734300097433.jpg)
I snip it off with abandon and use it to decorate mantelpieces and hall tables combined with bay, and rosemary for fragrance. You can also use berried stems such as holly, pittosporum and rosehips. Think outside the box and make use of anything evergreen as well as seedheads.
![[Chimonanthus praecox (pictured) is prized in winter when it bears a profusion of small, but highly perfumed, waxy yellow bowl-shaped flowers]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/15/22/93175489-14195711-image-a-54_1734300106653.jpg)
This year we have a display made from wispy stems of Old Man’s Beard, black berried myrtle, and spiky teasels – making sure to leave plenty outside for the goldfinches. Create your own wreath by bending flexible twigs such as hazel or willow into a ring secured with twine or thin wire, then weave in clippings from conifers and other evergreen foliage as well as dried hydrangea heads.
I hang card decorations from tall stems of dried bronze fennel and place small branches of shrubs such as Viburnum Bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’ in a vase to enjoy their perfume indoors. Create your own wreath by bending flexible twigs such as hazel or willow into a ring secured with twine or thin wire, then weave in clippings from conifers and other evergreen foliage as well as dried hydrangea heads.
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