Christmas table decorations from the garden – quick, easy & thrifty

You can make these two Christmas table decorations from foraged seed heads and garden greenery.

They’re quick – each takes less than ten minutes to create. They’re thrifty, because you can find most ingredients in your own garden or on walks.

And they’re sustainable. When the festive season is over, these Christmas tablescapes can go on the compost heap. It’s zero waste Christmas decorating.

These two ways with Christmas table decorations were created by cookery influencer and Great British Bake Off Star, Jane Beedle.

How to decorate your Christmas table on a budget

The most thrifty way to decorate your Christmas table is with evergreen foliage from the garden. If you don’t have much in your garden, you can ask friends or see what you can find on walks.

Jane foraged for the greenery in this post on dog walks and also picked ivy and berries from my garden. You could involve children in looking out for suitable twigs and seed heads, although tell them to point things out rather than pick things up.

The most useful greenery for decoration at this time of year is probably ivy. Use lengths of ivy as the basis for Christmas tablescapes or as garlands.

You can create an instant, easy garland by draping ivy along the top of a mantelpiece or wrapping it round a stair rail to make stair garlands.

Many people want to reduce the amount of ivy in their garden so you should have no trouble finding a source.

You are sometimes allowed to take plant material from parks, the countryside and public spaces. But it’s important to know what your local laws are on foraging.

What’s the law on foraging?

The law on foraging is confusing. It also varies from country to country and is different depending on your district. So check your local regulations.

Roughly speaking, you are usually allowed to pick wild flowers and their seed heads in the UK. But you must not dig plants up. You’re also not allowed to forage to sell on, unless you’ve got permission from whoever is in charge of the land.

And, of course, if you are on private land, you need the permission of the landowner to be there in the first place.

But Jane advises keeping an eye out. ‘A neighbour was pruning their bay tree and left bags of bay prunings on the street, with a note saying “help yourself”‘ – so you never know what you might find.

The secret of ivy-based Christmas table decorations…

The simplest, most flexible and longest lasting Christmas greenery is ivy.

But there is more than one kind of ivy. Some kinds are better for wreaths and garlands. Others are better for lying flat as a table decoration.

Jane showed me that the ivy growing up a brick wall is wonderfully flat for laying on a Christmas table.

Meanwhile the trailing ivy winds beautifully into rings, wreaths and garlands.

‘You can also wind ivy into a napkin ring,’ she says.

Jane layered two kinds of ivy for her first Christmas table decoration. She put the kind that grows up a brick wall flat on the table as a first layer. You could use a central table runner underneath, but you don’t have to.

Then she added the trailing variegated ivy on top.

You can add colour with fruit, such as tangerines from the fruit bowl. Eat them once your festive meal is over! And add just three or four colourful ornaments left over the Christmas tree decorations.

The only thing that Jane bought for this table decoration was a set of Moroccan battery powered fairy lights. She concealed the battery under more ivy. ‘This should last about three days,’ she says.

So these Christmas table decorations can be done a day or so before. But as they only take 10 minutes, you can also leave them to the last minute.

Christmas table decoration 2: based on conifer foliage

This is a time of year to appreciate the sculptural shapes and evergreen foliage of conifers. They have fallen out of fashion in recent years, but are well worth considering.

If you don’t have a conifer tree, ask a friend if you can clip a few branches. I go round the back of the tree to snip off a minor branch, but conifers are often so big that no-one will notice.

You should prune conifers between April and August, according to the RHS. But my Leylandii cypress never seems to have suffered from any minor pillaging of its branches at Christmas.

Jane based this second Christmas table decoration on the Leylandii cyprus branches she cut from my tree.

She added the dried foraged flower heads of teasel and wild carrot. The seeds of both have fallen out by now ‘so you’re not taking anything that could have provided food for birds,’ says Jane.

She sprayed the teasel with gold spray, which she admits is probably not very environmental. But there’s only a small amount of it, so I don’t think it will contaminate your compost heap too much.

She added hawthorn berries, rose hips and holly berries. ‘The conifers and the rest of the greenery will probably last three days,’ she says. ‘But keep the rose hips and berries outside until you need them, as they may go rotten in a warm house.’

How to use candles to decorate a Christmas table

Make sure that candles are secure in their holders or candlesticks. You don’t want a lit candle to fall over.

Candlesticks will lift the candles away from greenery, but you can also use pillar candles without candlesticks. In this case, it’s best to put them on a saucer, so that any wax doesn’t drip on the table. You can conceal the saucer with more greenery.

Never leave lighted candles unsupervised. They are a fire hazard.