Right-on wreaths

Pretty seasonal garlands and wreaths can be made with natural materials available in your garden, woods and hedges, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

GROWING UP AS one of a very large brood (large enough to field a Quidditch team), my childhood was spent making muddy forays into the nearby woods where, every December, we filled our pockets with sticky pine-cones and damp moss and together dragged home heavy armfuls of holly, ivy and (contraband) Sitka spruce branches pilfered from the nearby coniferous plantations.

The weeks leading up to Christmas were spent making splendidly festive, pine-scented garlands lashed together with wire and string and decorated with red paper bows, as well as perfumed pomanders fashioned out of oranges, cloves and brightly-coloured ribbons. We filled vases with seasonal arrangements of lichen-covered twigs and delicate, cone-covered larch branches, and then festooned them with dainty necklaces of rosehips threaded together with bright red cotton.

So when I recently heard about the work of Joyce O’Malley Fitzpatrick, the botanist and biochemist who describes herself as a nature artist and who teaches people how to make the loveliest of Christmas decorations using only natural materials – twigs, berries, dried leaves, seed-heads, and faded flower heads – I was curious to know more.

“There’s an old family saying that I’ve always loved – Ta nádur ann – which roughly translates as – You have the nature in you – says O’Malley Fitzpatrick, who is a cousin of the late artist, Tony O’Malley. “Ever since I was a small child playing in my grandmother, Florence Walshe’s Dublin garden, I’ve always had a huge love and wonder of the outdoors. Then, as a young graduate, I went to America where along with my day job as a biotechnologist, I worked weekends in flower shops in LA and San Francisco, making arrangements for film sets and huge, private houses.

“One of my bosses was a man called Forest Natalini – a very gifted florist who’d fought in the Korean war as a teenager and who’d vowed to himself that if he survived, he’d dedicate his life to beauty. Which he did. He taught me an enormous amount about appreciating the glory and the solace to be found in nature, once you just take the time to stop and look.”

On her eventual return to Ireland, O’Malley Fitzpatrick worked with various Dublin-based flower shops as well as for the landscape architect, Angela Jupe, who in those days owned a garden furniture and accessories shop in Dublin. “We’d travel to the markets in Paris and buy the most amazing dried and silk flowers – delphiniums, larkspur, sea lavender, protaeas – and I would make up these huge arrangements,” she remembers fondly.

These days she works as an activity co-ordinator for nursing homes in Blackrock, Co Dublin. “My experience has taught me that the solution to nearly every one of our ills lies in the outdoors, that things from nature speak to us and connect with us. For example, older people, particularly those suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, get such a huge lift from just touching or handling materials taken from the garden or outdoors – it might be a flower, a seed head, a leaf. The same goes for Christmas decorations, homemade from natural materials – nothing is more beautiful.

So what, I wondered, are the secrets of the trade, particularly for anyone who has never tried to make their own decorations before?

“The first thing I’d say is don’t wait until you’re an expert. I firmly believe that anybody can do it as long as they’re prepared to give it a try, she says. “Along with florist wire, metal coat-hangers, oasis foam, string and a sharp scissors, my glue gun is indispensible. I glue everything in place – ribbons, flowers, berries, seedheads, twigs – the lot. As for learning basic floristry skills, like wiring together foliage or flowers, try surfing the net. There’s loads of information out there on websites and YouTube. And don’t make work for yourself – it makes a lot more sense to buy a basic spruce wreath for a fiver, strip off the cheap ribbon and plastic ornaments and then redecorate it with your own choice of berries, dried flowerheads and seedheads, than it does to wire one from scratch.”

As for the materials that O’Malley Fitzpatrick favours, anything might catch the attention of this nature-lovers’ magpie eye. “Larch and alder cones, the faded seedheads of montbretia, candelabra primulas, alliums, poppies and sycamore, dried grasses, dried leaves, dried seaweeds, the blue pods of Decaisnea fargesii, dried hydrangea flowers or the icy-blue blossoms of the sea holly, chestnuts, fresh figs, the red berries of skimmia or the beautiful metallic-blue berries of Viburnum tiinus, even small bits of driftwood washed up on the beach.

“I’ve discovered that it’s a question of just opening your eyes and your mind to the beauty all around us,” she says. “For example, a recent storm brought down the seedheads of a cordyline growing in my garden. Until then, I’d never noticed how beautiful they are. But once you take the time to stop and look, things start to present themselves. Even just a bunch of handpicked, mixed evergreen foliage tied with a colourful ribbon will look lovely hung on a front door. And you don’t need to spend a fortune on expensive ribbon either. Use colourful fabric remnants instead – it’ll look just as good. The most important thing to remember is that everyone has the eye for beauty. It’s in us all.”

Joyce O’Malley Fitzpatrick will be doing a demonstration on how to make natural Christmas decorations at Cafe du Journal, 17a, The Crescent, Monkstown, Co Dublin on Tuesday, December 13th, (6.30-9.30pm), where there will also be an exhibition of her work

Florist supplies

Joyce O'Malley Fitzpatrick buys most of her florist supplies in Tip-Top Cash Carry, 49 East Arran Street, Dublin 7 (tel: 01-8731844). Woodies also sell a range of florist accessories, as well as a basic glue gun for €15.99 She will be giving a demonstration on how to make natural Christmas decorations at the Cafe du Journal, The Crescent, Monkstown Village, Co Dublin on Tuesday 13th December, (6.30-9.30pm),

This weekend in the garden

Theres still time to plant tulip bulbs and to cut back and lift tender plants such as cannas, tuberous begonias, dahlia, before washing them and storing them in a cool, frost-free place. If the ground isn't too waterlogged, now is the best time to get bare-rooted trees, shrubs, hedging and fruit bushes into the ground. Dont forget to plant a few garlic cloves. Organic grower Nicky Kyle advises using varieties 'Thermidrome' and 'Christo. Clean and fill up bird feeders.