Christmas décor, naturally

I feel like it was such a short time ago I was anx­iously writ­ing about spring gar­den­ing, it is hard to believe we have made it to Decem­ber and true win­ter is just a few weeks away. Despite the bit­ter cold, howl­ing winds, and dif­fi­cult travel — OK, I will stop — undoubt­edly the bright­est time of the win­ter is the hol­i­days. Oth­er­wise dark streets by night are illu­mi­nated and trans­formed by dec­o­ra­tive lights in all col­ors, door­ways are bedecked in green­ery and rib­bon, and trees shine from inside packed to the gills with fam­ily memen­tos. While I do love the free­dom of sum­mer warmth, my absolute favorite time of the year is Decem­ber. This spe­cial time of year is made even more spe­cial by using nat­ural mate­ri­als in your décor. As soon as I was old enough to hijack my fam­ily hol­i­days, I pawned the cum­ber­some, dusty arti­fi­cial off on a fam­ily friend and pro­claimed we would only have real trees from this point on.

I aim to address the most com­mon issues peo­ple have with nat­ural trees and dis­pel a few myths as well. As with many other facets of the design world right now, it is all about nat­ural. A sim­ple satin bow on a nat­ural box­wood wreath packs more punch than an ornately labored-over arti­fi­cial. It is a design­ers’ best trick — live flow­ers, green­ery, or cut­tings always bring the room to life. Sub­tle details that make all the difference.

The first and eas­i­est mis­con­cep­tion about nat­ural Christ­mas trees is that they dry out before Christ­mas. Usu­ally it is in fact the basin of water that dries too soon, not the tree. To main­tain your tree until Christ­mas, it is impor­tant to check the water level every day. Equally impor­tant is keep­ing the water clean. This can be chal­leng­ing, as remov­ing the tree to clean the basin is not an option. I have found the best way to kill the bac­te­ria released from the trunk of the tree that will block the tree from accept­ing water is adding one-half tea­spoon liq­uid bleach to the water. Not enough to harm the tree, but enough to kill the pathogens. If pets are drink­ing the water is a con­cern, wrap plas­tic wrap around the trunk and the basin. Also impor­tant when pur­chas­ing your tree is to ask for a fresh cut.

Another com­mon fal­lacy is that all nat­ural trees shed nee­dles all over the house. I have learned the hard way, that there are indeed right and wrong vari­eties for indoor use. A few years ago, I dis­cov­ered a thick row of beau­ti­ful Nor­way spruce trees in a neigh­bor­hood under devel­op­ment. The trees were marked with orange Xs so I fig­ured I could cut from them for Christ­mas décor. I was elated — beau­ti­ful, full branches of fresh green­ery. Unfor­tu­nately, Nor­way spruce has ter­ri­ble nee­dle reten­tion. Pine nee­dles were every­where. Luck­ily, the six vari­eties sold as Christ­mas trees here in Cen­tral Ohio are all ideal for indoor longevity. Scotch pine, east­ern white pine, blue spruce, Douglas-fir, Fraser fir, and Canaan fir. Accord­ing to OSU’s fact sheet F-49–99, “The most effec­tive way for a buyer to eval­u­ate the fresh­ness of a cut Christ­mas tree is by how firmly the nee­dles are attached to the branches. The eas­i­est way to eval­u­ate this is to lightly grasp a branch of the tree and gen­tly pull the branch and nee­dles through your hand. If the tree is fresh, very few nee­dles will come off. Another way to eval­u­ate nee­dle fast­ness is to shake or bounce the tree on the bot­tom of its trunk and observe nee­dle drop. Again, if only a few green nee­dles drop, the tree is prob­a­bly fresh. When eval­u­at­ing fresh­ness, do not be con­cerned if exces­sive amounts of brown nee­dles fall. Remem­ber, these are the nee­dles that the tree sheds each year. Just make sure the tree is shaken before it is taken into your home.”

While it may seem that cut­ting down any tree is not the envi­ron­men­tally friendly option, in the debate between live and arti­fi­cial trees, actu­ally choos­ing a nat­ural tree is the far more ‘green’ option. Arti­fi­cial trees are made of PVC and non-recyclable and non-biodegradable; mean­ing an arti­fi­cial tree will sit in a land­fill for hun­dreds of years.

Another fab­u­lous project for the hol­i­days is forc­ing bulbs. While amaryl­lis is with­out a doubt the queen of hol­i­day forced bulbs, I also love to force paper­whites (Nar­cis­sus papyraceus). They are much eas­ier than amaryl­lis and require far less plan­ning. Paper­whites, unlike many other mem­bers of the Nar­cis­sus fam­ily, do not require chill­ing. My favorite way to grow paper­whites at Christ­mas is in a glass con­tainer, with river rock and water. Sim­ply place the bulbs on top of the rock and fill water up to the bot­tom of the bulb. Roots will begin to set imme­di­ately and in 3–4 weeks there will be a strongly per­fumed white bloom.

Paper­whites in large groups with a touch of green­ery make a spec­tac­u­lar Hanukkah cen­ter­piece. Unfor­tu­nately for a Christ­mas bloom, amaryl­lis must be planted sev­eral weeks ear­lier. Another allur­ing qual­ity of paper­whites is how inex­pen­sive the bulbs are. Whereas one amaryl­lis bulb can cost between $12 and $20, for that amount one can pur­chase enough paper­white bulbs for sev­eral containers.

The hol­i­days are a very spe­cial time, made even more spe­cial by the intro­duc­tion of fab­u­lous organic mate­ri­als. Hav­ing nat­ural hol­i­day décor makes this short sea­son even more mag­i­cal. It forces your décor to be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent every year, and best of all, no year-round stor­age required. Equally impor­tant to uphold­ing long-standing hol­i­day tra­di­tions is cre­at­ing new ones—selecting the per­fect tree, mak­ing wreathes by hand with live mate­ri­als, and forc­ing bulbs that pro­vide a burst of fresh­ness and bloom in the cold all make for lovely new expe­ri­ences, worth repeat­ing every year.

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gard­ner volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Dec 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.