Ferns For Use Christmas Decorating Ideas

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For me, Christmas is a time to go even more overboard on flowers than usual. When it comes to Christmas decorations, I adorn every surface, staircase and amenable small person with flowers, candles, ivy and twinkling lights. However, I cannot bear poinsettias and will not let anything related to a cinnamon stick through the door. Something about predictable Christmas flowers makes me want to rebel.

I use locally grown flowers as much as possible, but at this time of year I do turn to Holland for help. My arrangements are made mostly from seasonal foliage - eucalyptus, box, ivy, yew and fir - plus a few foreigners. This year's favourites are giant delphiniums, towering lime-green moluccella, striped amaryllis, jewel-coloured ranunculus, white anemones with velvety black middles and potted white Helleborus niger.

For a show-stopping mantelpiece arrangement, pace out soaked Oasis foam in trays along the length of your mantelpiece and then begin creating the overall shape with foliage. I like to go large and wayward. Eucalyptus cinerea is my top foliage for this time of year - it smells delicious and still looks beautiful when it dries. Variegated ivy, berried ivy and berried eucalyptus are also favourites. Fill the Oasis with foliage so you cannot see any gaps, putting taller pieces at the back and off to the sides and shorter lengths in the middle, with trailing bits cascading at the front.

How to decorate a Christmas tree like a House & Garden editor

Now begin adding flowers, the bigger leading ladies first - like the delphiniums and moluccella - and the smaller chorus girls at the end. Cut all the stems on an angle and poke them into the Oasis as far as they will go. Keep standing back to look at the shape - you may have to cut some stems more to get different heights. Fill in gaps with more flowers. Dried hydrangeas are my best friends at Christmas on account of their colour and bulk - and no diva-ish wilting. I rest them on the foliage or balance them in spaces quite low down.

While the arrangement is in situ, you may have to tweak out a few flowers if they start to wilt. There are no rules about which flowers to use, so choose ones you love and can afford and that work with your colour scheme.

Flowers and foliage to use

eucalyptus
berried ivy
berried eucalyptus
variegated ivy
ruscus, robusta
pittosporum
eryngium
roses
spray roses
nerine
painted gold berries
Icelandic poppies
delphinium
larkspur
anemones
dried hydrangeas
moluccella

More decorative ideas to try

Dot mismatched jugs along your dining table and have them bursting with green and white parrot tulips, majestic white anemones and sparkling white hellebores.
Weave candles in a variety of heights between flowers - I will be using Venetian blown-glass candlesticks designed by my sister-in-law, Matilda Goad, and cream tapered candles.
When making wreaths, use dried or non-wilting foliage and flowers - I like dried hydrangeas and foraged old man's beard, and I make the wreath base from lengths of grapevine.
If you want fresh flowers, fill huge jardinieres or wicker baskets with forced paperwhites or hyacinths. Cover the soil with moss and spike in twigs to add support and drama

Amanda Brooks' house in the Cotswolds is beautifully decorated for Christmas, making ample use of foliage (as well as plenty of kitsch decorations. The mantlepiece in the sitting room, created with the help of Silka Rittson Thomas of Tuk Tuk Flowers, features fir branches, leaves and berries intertwined with glass pomegranate baubles, and the arrangement climbs up the mirror above the fireplace instead of being confined to the mantel alone.
At Neidpath Castle in Scotland, owner Lulu Benson gets the entire estate ready for Christmas with an abundance of foliage used for floral arrangements, garlands on the fireplaces and table decorations.
For one Christmas table setting, Lulu has suspended pine branches from the ceiling as well as using them to decorate mirrors and the table.
For those lucky enough to have a mezzanine, look to Ven House for your Christmas decorating inspiration and drape the balcony with elegant garlands. A mahogany table by Jamb holds a seasonal bouquet and foliage is used to decorate the tree itself, with russet-coloured strands of leaves instead of garish tinsel.
A fireplace is a traditional place for a garland, but our decoration team proves here that cabinets and wardrobes are equally effective places to drape Christmas foliage.
Why have one Christmas tree when you could use two or more to great effect? Frame a focal point with firs for a full-on festive look.
Interior designer Carlos Garcia loves to use foliage for his Christmas decorations. "The tradition of bringing foliage into the house is intended to ward off evil spirits, so deck your halls, mantelpieces and staircases or place greenery above tapestries and paintings. Use branches of varied conifers, holly and long strands of ivy to create a wonderfully festive environment, and add fern leaves and dead tree branches to create a realistic woodland still life. They are sustainable, and you can either add them to your compost heap or burn them in the fires after using them, which releases a beautiful scent."
At this former rectory in the West Country, foraged Christmas decorations and salvaged materials enhance the sense of a house that has been made suitable for modern family life, while retaining its Victorian character. At Christmas, the family gathers pine cones and branches of old man's beard to decorate this room at the front of the house, which has walls painted in Farrow & Ball's 'Setting Plaster'.
Having started a book-and-bunch delivery service in 2016, the co-founders of Worm now specialise in creating dramatic arrangements, like this one for a Christmas table. "Richness and indulgence were our key concepts when it came to the table arrangement. We expect to see festive tables overflowing with food, so why not create the same effect with flowers? The palette of soft peach and clashing red was devised using flowers that were in and out of season – we wanted it to contain elements that felt as if they had been gathered throughout the year. Urns were filled with chicken wire to support the stems and to secure all the overflowing elements. Assemble it two days before Christmas and it should last for five days if you keep the water topped up. For these arrangements we used: roses, ranunculus, butterfly ranunculus, lisianthus, dried honesty, tulips, eucalyptus, red euphorbia, foraged grasses, Scots pine, pomegranates, apples, figs, plums and nuts."
weareworm.com
'I have always favoured traditional but pared-down schemes that look natural, light and fresh,' says Ben Pentreath. 'For me, the most important thing is to bring greenery into the house. I don't believe in buying lots of shiny, glittery imported stuff that's just going to end up in the bin.' On the chimneypiece of his Dorset home are holly and ivy that gathered from nearby woods.
Antique candlesticks holding dark brown candles, and lemons - an original and inexpensive Christmas decoration that provides a zingy contrast to the greenery - deck the mantlepiece of designer Ben Penthreath.
Philippa Craddock, who has an eponymous studio in Fulham and a flower shop in Selfridges Foodhall, wanted her staircase decoration to have a gathered feel, as if all the woodland ingredients had been collected on a cold country walk. "It was made using Ivy, spruce, berried eucalyptus, asparagus ferns, flowering jasmine and blue thistle. First, we used plastic sheeting to protect the banister, before positioning a garland of rope and gardener's twine, which we used as the base to which everything was attached. Put this up a week before Christmas and, like the wreath, it will dry out but keep its shape, without shedding berries or leaves. To create something like this on a smaller scale, replace the resting end with hanging trails like those on the wreath."
philippacraddock.com
Florence Kennedy, founder of Petalon, started the east London-based floristry business as a flower delivery service. For a Christmas chimneypiece decoration she has used Dried honesty seed heads, dried poppy heads, kochia, dried sea lavender, silver brunia, lisianthus, white cyclamen and Magnolia grandiflora leaves. "A chicken-wire base was the starting point for the chimneypiece decoration, with each stem being worked through. We foraged the dried grasses and teasels from Hackney Marshes – similar foliage can be found in most areas of the country. The dried elements of the arrangement will last indefinitely, whereas the fresh flowers need to be inserted with their stems in small water tubes.
petalon.co.uk
In a Scandinavian-inspired Christmas scheme, our decoration editors used small, simple vases filled with foliage on the mantelpiece, and a larger vase with long holly stems on the coffee table.
At the Inchyra Estate in Scotland Edinburgh-based florist Pyrus have suspended a bough hung with glass vessels holding fairy lights over the dining table.
Here House & Garden decoration editor Gabby Deeming has decked the canopy of this Eighteenth-century Spanish daybed with a bushels of fir and multi-coloured baubles.
Kitten Grayson's dramatic fireplace arrangements are immediately recognisable. Kitten and Harriette recommend starting with three of four components, and building them up to create an intense look. This garland was made with a base of different types of pine, birch catkin twigs, dried hydrangeas, ilex berries and pink peppercorns. The hydrangeas in all these pieces were dried earlier in the autumn by hanging them upside down for a week or so. To make an arrangement like this, first lay cellophane down on the surface of the mantelpiece, then start with the biggest elements - in this case, the pine leaves. The hydrangeas, berries and peppercorns can then be fastened onto the heavier branches using floristry wire or cable ties.
kittengrayson.com
At her restored farmhouse in Cumbria Annabel Lewis, owner of specialist haberdasher's V V Rouleaux, has festooned her front door with pine boughs and bows, which lead down to two giant log baskets hung with ribbon.
Instead of a traditional fir tree Annabel Lewis, owner of specialist haberdasher's V V Rouleaux, has used a bare lichen covered branch from the garden, and adorned it with an array of delicate vintage jewels, sourced from a defunct Paris shop - 'I bought the entire contents,' says Annabel. Tied with ribbon and strung on wire they glitter enticingly in the light of the open fire.
Forties glazed Fulham Pottery vases, by Constance Spry, £2,450 for a set of nine, fromQuindry. Floating plinth shelves, £11.95 each, from The Good Shelf Company. Foliagegarlands, from £82.50 a metre, from Achillea Flowers. Poppy seed-head garlands, threaded and sprayed with gold paint by House & Garden.
If your tree is a little more sparse than you'd like, simply pad it out with additional foliage. Here decoration editor Gabby Deeming has used eucalyptus and snowberry inserted between the branches, pairing with a selection of decorations from Selfridges. A eucalyptus-and-pine banister garland from Jamie Aston, twined with fairy lights from Lights4fun winds its way up the bannister.
This simple, natural arrangement works especially well in a smaller space or above a console table. Tie string around each end of a fir branch and hang it from a central point with twine. After a short amount of time, it will form this lovely relaxed shape. If you find that it falls back like a hammock, an additional length of string running between the two ends to form a triangle should keep it facing forward. Hang little bud vases at random lengths and fill with tiny berries or winter flowers. Red berries are festive, while bold flowers like hellebores would look very chic. Alternatively, attach brown envelopes with string or tape for a different take on an advent calendar.
Test tubes are an unexpected vessel for winter flowers and foliage. Dried foliage such as thistle heads or honesty seed pods will last without water, which can go murky. Try it with paperwhites in the spring.
Delicate plaster leaves by artist Peter Hone - which are individually cast from real specimens - look beautiful against the spindly, lichen-covered branch. To add extra sparkle we improvised some tiny hanging decorations from star-shaped table confetti hung on 1mm-gauge floristry wire.
'I made these arrangements myself very simply using moss and twigs from The Chelsea Gardener, says designer Francis Sultana. 'If you live in the country I recommend gathering your own decorations in the hedgerows. Bare winter branches have a delicate look that is more modern than evergreen plants such as holly.'
'Never limit decorations to just the table.' says designer Paolo Moschino. 'Our house is filled with amaryllis and we cover the chandelier with greenery from the garden and top it up with pretty bits and pieces from New Covent Garden Flower Market. If you can face waking up early enough to get there in good time, then Geoff at Quality Plants is the man to go to for this kind of thing.'
'I always rope in Vic Brotherson of Scarlet & Violet for the flowers and foliage,' says Suzanne Sharpe of The Rug Company, whose dining room is a feast of greenery at Christmas. Here tall glass vases are filled with long stemmed foliage for a loose natural look with serious impact.