Have you ever looked at those gorgeous wreaths that start popping up in boutiques, nurseries and even grocery stores around now, only to discover they're way outside your price range?
What started as some fall pruning, turned into an afternoon of wreath and garland making with my mother. While there are many different vines you can use to make your own wreath form, we used honeysuckle. Our honeysuckle vines are a bit out of control and already many of them twist into the most perfectly formed vines that just needed to be gently bent into a wreath shape and then wired together.
So today I thought it would be fun to give you some ideas to make your own wreath or garland out of things you may already have growing in your yard.
Materials
Base Options
- Grape vines
- Honeysuckle vines
- evergreen branches, stripped of needles
- metal wreath form
Leaves or Greenery
- olive branches
- magnolia branches/leaves
- eucalyptus
- rosemary branches
- laurel
- boxwood
- lavender
Tools
- a good pair of pruners
- flower snips (or pruners will suffice)
- wire cutters
- needle nose pliers
- 20 or 22 gauge wire
Getting Started
First decide what your base material is going to be. Do you have a huge honeysuckle growing on the side of your house? Do you have boxwood shrubs or maybe a Douglas Fir tree that you could prune a bit of and then use a wire wreath form for your base?
For this vine wreath I used an old honeysuckle plant. Since the vines themselves had already braided into a pretty strand I simply cut approximately 6 feet of vines to begin with.
I used 2 cuttings of vines to braid together, with the thicker ends of one strand against the smaller ends of the other strand. This way your wreath will look balanced in terms of thickness through the entire wreath.
Wear some good gloves to bend your vines together, and then once you like how round your wreath is, cut your wire. Cut approximately 6in segments of wire. Bend your wire around the vines where the wreath comes together with one hand. While holding the wire in place, take your needle nose pliers and pull the wire tight around the vines until it is secure.
Shaping Your Wreath
If you're making a wreath simply out of vines, then as long as your vines aren't completely dead and crispy, you can still bend them a bit and shape them into a better circle.
If you need to trim some of the leaves off or runaway vines that have escaped your wreath form, then simply prune off what you don't want and try to bend any leftover stems into your vines so they don't stick out too obviously.
Finishing Touches
In the place where you brought your branch ends together, you'll have a bit of wire to likely cover up. There's a number of different ways to do so. It just depends on your preference. For my wreath I cut some magnolia and eucalyptus branches and simply weaved their stems into the wreath vines.
You could also add a bow or use that place to wrap a thick piece of ribbon to hang your wreath from. It's all up to your personal preference.
Initially I hung my wreath inside for a few days, but the fresh honeysuckle leaves wilted and looked sad, so back out to the greenhouse I trudged. I ended up snipping many of the rogue branches off. Then after looking at it again I replaced the magnolia branches with cedar branch bunches around the entire wreath.
Again, you can use whatever you have on hand. If you don't live out in the country and have access to evergreen trees or a wild honeysuckle, starting with a grapevine wreath form and then buying bunches of greens from the grocery store is an easy and accessible option.
I hope you love your homemade wreath this year!