34 ways to decorate with Christmas foliage
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.
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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
- 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
Christopher Horwood1/24In her Yorkshire house, our editor Hatta Byng brings the outside in for Christmas with a beautiful garland on the living room mantlepiece of dried hydrangeas and hops.
Christopher Horwood2/24The dining room is festooned with foliage too, over the mantlepiece and paperwhites lining the table.
Jasper Fry3/24In a Christmas shopping scheme of unexpected jewel tones, our Decoration Editor Rémy Mishon took a novel approach to a fir garland, hanging pieces vertically from a string of pretty ribbons. It's a novel and brilliant take on decorating with foliage.
Michael Sinclair4/24In Martin Brudnizki's 17th-century Sussex flat decked out in colourful Christmas finery, the light catches the now-gilded plasterwork cornice and original pine fire surround, stripped of layers of paint, part-gilded and festooned at this time of year with evergreen garlands. He has studded the garland with ribbons and shiny red baubles to elevate the greenery to something a little more theatrical, which mirrors the feel of the room.
Tom Griffiths5/24Sean Pritchard's eccentric, eclectic country cottage is the perfect place to go wild with decorations for Christmas. Pictured here, a garland made from garden foliage (a mix of bay, yew, holly, laurel and photinia) is pinned up to the ceiling and hangs down dramatically, interspersed with red and green ribbons to great effect.
Tom Griffiths6/24Sean has tucked foliage into corners and behind pictures around the house, making it feel like the lovely leaves are sprouting from within the bones of the house itself.
Martin Morrell7/24This snug 17th-century farmhouse in the Lake District gets ready for Christmas by garlanding the impressive wooden fireplace surround with unadorned foliage.
Martin Morrell8/24Garlands of fresh seasonal greenery also decorate the chimneypiece in this oldest part of the same house, where a carved oak spice cupboard dated 1715 is set into the thick stone wall. Here, it is much more abundant and features festive red berries.
Paul Massey9/24Interior designer Marie-Louise Sjögren uses a lot of foliage when decorating her historic house on the Stockholm archipelago, including hanging wreaths inside her windows in the dining room. These pick up on the greenery that decorates her Christmas table too.
Paul Massey10/24The bannisters and hallway fireplace are also decorated with an array of foliage, including eucalyptus.
Paul Massey11/24“You don’t want things too precious at Christmas,” says the floral designer Paul Hawkins, surveying the decorations he has created for his own charming mews house in Chelsea, “but then neither do you want it to look like…” he considers for a moment, “a tart’s boudoir.” In this spirit, a traditional garland of fir, pine cones and dried oranges decorates the bannister.
Mark Fox12/24Christmas with Luke Edward Hall and Duncan Campbell at their Cotswold cottage is a riotously maximalist affair. In their sitting room they have used foliage to great effect, with a vase full of holly branches to the left and a mantelpiece draped in evergreen sprigs.
Owen Gale13/24Amanda 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.
Owen Gale14/24Close up you can see that Amanda has laced retro red baubles into the foliage, which look like juicy, enlarged holly berries. She creates interesting juxtaposition between the natural feeling of the foliage and the reclaimed wood around the room, with more pop-y, playful colours that make the room really sing with a kind of 1980s festive revelry.
Michael Sinclair15/24Foliage doesn't have to be maximalist to be beautiful. Austere sprigs of holly look just right over the simple Georgian fireplace in Pedro da Costa Felgueiras' Spitalfields house.
Dean Hearne16/24At 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.
Dean Hearne17/24For one Christmas table setting, Lulu has suspended pine branches from the ceiling as well as using them to decorate mirrors and the table.
Yuki Sugiura18/24Christmas decorations don't have to be all holly and fir; these graceful arrangements of foliage by Miss Pickering in a Christmas shoppable scheme are a brilliant alternative that evoke a sense of the year's end.
Michael Sinclair19/24For 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.
Andrew Montgomery20/24A 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.
Paul Massey21/24Interior 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."
Michael Sinclair22/24At 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’.
Rachel Whiting23/24'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.
Rachel Whiting24/24Antique 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.
