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The 12 gardening tips of Christmas

laura

Okay, so if you’re wondering what to do in the garden at Christmas, here are our 12 tips to make the festive season special and absolutely none of them involve queueing, alcohol or recipes for vegan sausage meat.

1. Bring your garden birds close up. Hang your bird feeders right up against your kitchen window; your reward will be thrilling close up views of all sorts of tits and finches and maybe even a nuthatch or, on red letter days, a spotted woodpecker. To make them safe from the swooping sparrowhawks place a protective shield of bamboo canes around the feeder. I accept that blue tits are part of nature’s pyramid of numbers but actually I’d rather not witness the evidence whilst I am washing up. We also have a night shift of charming little wood mice with prehensile tails…

2. Cheat with winter stems. The accepted wisdom is to plant winter stems against an evergreen backdrop where they can be lit by the low winter sun, preferably beside a lake – great if you live at Chatsworth…. so cheat, by cutting coloured dogwood or willow stems and pushing them in around the other plants in sunny winter pots. They remain perky and actually increase in colour and vibrancy as the winter progresses, starting to root as spring approaches.

Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’

3. Never buy more than one Sarcococca (Christmas box) plant. A quintessential garden ingredient at this time of the year, these charming evergreen,winter flowering shrubs (there are several different species, all good) are so useful. But you only need to invest in one plant as they seed so freely that you can just dig up young plants from around their base and establish them in any little dark corner or pathway where their scent will catch you unawares on mild winter mornings. Cut a tiny sprig to scent an entire guest bedroom.

Christmas box babies – lots of them!

(Louise also knows how evergreen foliage can lift a garden in winter and has a great euphorbia as her plant of the moment).

4. Keep your pots of hyacinths outside. Who ever thought that bringing a naturally hardy bulbous plant indoors to flower was a good idea? Keeping them in your outdoor porch or on a sunny outdoor table will keep them pert and sturdy, with none of that gangly flopping held up with props and string,  and they will last twice as long. You can always bring them in and pop them on the table for that special meal.

Hyacinths will look better and last longer if you give them some tough love

Elaine

Now, for once, Laura has given you some REALLY USEFUL ideas, instead of her usual science-y head-in-the-clouds stuff.  Let me add a few more to her list of tips :

5. Ship in your Christmas roses. They’re lovely but they’re not roses, and they don’t flower at Christmas. It’s a hellebore, Helleborus niger, in fact.  And in my experience,  the only time you will get them to flower in late December rather than January is if you buy them ready-primed from a garden centre.

You should find stacks of them there, all raring to display their enchanting snow-white flowers while the turkey’s on the table (or at least the leftovers). Then you’ll plant them out in the garden to flower at their normal (later) time next year.

‘Christmas’ Rose?!

6. Have a tidy up. If your garden is anything like mine, this is a messy old time of year.  Some plants may have pretty seedheads but others are looking soggy and straggly with all their summer glory dissipated.  So just try to sharpen up the edges of the garden a little.  Sweep the paths and keep the evergreen shrubs neatly cut or even topiarised.  Honestly, it’s extraordinary how much a whip-smart box hedge will pardon a dank pile of drifted leaves.

Perhaps not the most welcome gift….

7. Give people plants for Christmas.  Our son and daughter-in-law are planning a new little town garden at the moment, so horticultural gifts are on my mind.  I would personally steer clear of Amorphophallus titanium which looks like it sounds (!), only flowers once every 10 to 20 years, and honks of decomposing meat, however – they would certainly remember who gave them that.

8. Make your own festive littletree‘. Dig out one of those tripod-arrangements for growing dwarf climbers in a pot or even tomatoes. Then use it as a framework for fairy-lights wound round the uprights, baubles, ribbon.. whatever you like, inside or outside.  An almost infinitely adaptable tip, this.  You could even make a tripod of simple canes, sprayed silver or gold, though gold bamboo canes might look a little odd when you are growing your beans up them next spring.


Caroline

Or you could follow my example and just not bother.  I know what my tomato tripod would look like after I’d sprayed it with glitter – less Kirsty Allsop and more Little Miss Messy.  

9. My first recommendation would be: forage for Christmas decorations. Buying man-made decorations feels out-of-step with the times, and indeed one’s depleted 2022 budget. Release your inner Charles Dickens, go out and cut a few sprigs of ivy, rosehips and holly to hang on the walls. I admit I have invested in rather miraculous (and very cheap) temporary hooks for this but they are re-useable.

My free-from-the-hedgerow decoration – thanks to these miraculous little ‘stick-on’ hooks!

10. Invest in an amaryllis. Is Christmas really Christmas without the drama of a blood red amaryllis on your white linen tablecloth? It raises the game and discourages anyone from wearing their paper hats or blowing a kazoo in your face – imagine Angelina Jolie in a Bingo Hall. If, like me, you didn’t get round to buying the bulbs in October…(Tescos for me I’m afraid, others were unaffordable in my view)…..you can get them on the point of flowering at Dobbies.

Mine will not be looking like this on Christmas Day but every year I love having a bash. I’ll be back in touch in February!

11.Keep the mistletoe looking sprightly. I’m surprised Elaine didn’t mention mistletoe. Normally she loves to tell you how it grows naturally in her garden in France, blah blah. To be fair, plastic mistletoe is a bit too naff even for me, but remember the real thing dries out quite quickly so pick a cool spot for it; an unheated porch is ideal. It’s a lovely tradition but Covid is still a very nasty virus (Laura will currently endorse this – poor thing), so maybe more of a peck that a full-on smacker, even now.

12. Finally if you’ve been an awfully good girl/boy, remember to write your note to Santa asking him to hurry down the chimney with something from The3Growbags shop, but best to leave it lying around conspicuously for several days before sending it off to Lapland.

More NB If you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.

By the3growbags

We're three sisters who love gardening, plants and even the science of horticulture but we're not all experts. We'd love everyone even remotely interested in their gardens to be part of our blogsite.

6 replies on “The 12 gardening tips of Christmas”

Wot no alcohol? No grow your own cocktails !
Happy Christmas to you all.
Best wishes for the New Year too!

I know, I know Irene, it’s very surprising that alcohol didn’t get a mention by even Caroline but she has gone down with gastric flu so her tips are all rather tame I’m afraid. Happy Christmas and thank you for supporting our blog! Laura

Absolutely loved this – but I hesitate to endorse the ‘give plants’ item. Particularly with clueless newcomers to our world I find it goes down well if instead of a plant, you give a home-made ‘token’, to cover the cost of taking them them to a ‘proper’ nursery to help them choose something really stunning (and appropriate for their garden), followed by a pub lunch….Happy Christmas Elaine (and the Other 2 Bags, of course)

Hi Helen, Elaine here. We are so glad you enjoyed this week’s blog! Yes, you are quite right – guiding gardening newbies to make the right choice of a plant at a fabulous nursery, and following it with a slap-up pub lunch sounds like a great idea to me. I hope my son and daughter-in-law aren’t reading this, because they’ll find out what they’re getting! Merry Christmas to you from all the Growbags, and thank you so much for your support.

Any tips on protecting crocus from squirrels? I have just seen a carnage of, I think, all my crocus bulbs under the tree in my front garden. The lawn dug up and the white shoots bitten off and lying all aound. I had put down chilli powder but that sems to have made the bulbs even more attractive to maurauding squirrels. Years of work and pleasure lost in one morning.
helen

Hi Helen, aaargghh, those wretched squirrels! I’m so sorry to hear about your poor crocuses. Well, I think you can buy products like Ro-pel to deter this kind of hooliganism. I prefer to use barriers for my patches or pots of bulbs – wire netting or upturned wire hanging baskets and that does seem to protect them quite well. Under a tree, you can fix chicken wire over the ground (or perhaps fixed to frames) which stays there over the winter and can be removed when the grass is growing strongly again, and the threat of squirrel depredation is less. I wish you luck. All the best, Elaine

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