How to Make a Christmas Wreath With Fresh Branches
When you use nature as inspiration, decorating for Christmas becomes so simple! Bringing fresh greens into your home can inexpensively turn it into a winter wonderland fit for the jolly season. It’s easy to make a fresh Christmas wreath by shopping in your own garden.
With a few clippings from your favorite evergreen trees, you can make a festive DIY wreath to hang on your front door. Here’s how to make one in just a couple of hours!
1. Harvest Your Greens
Grabbing branches from the trees in your front yard or neighborhood is simple. When you do your annual pruning, save the branches to use in your wreath, or harvest a few stems here and there for your decorations.
Some of the best evergreens for festive decorating include:
- Cedar
- Douglas Fir
- Holly
- Boxwood
- Pine
- Cypress
- Juniper
- Spruce
- Laurel
- Cotoneaster
- Yellow or Red Dogwood
- Corkscrew Willow
- American Beautyberry
This DIY Christmas wreath features cedar, douglas fir, and white pine.
Bring a bucket of water with you while cutting your branches. Place the branches directly in the water to soak moisture before they go in the wreath!
2. Prepare Your Greens
Before making your wreath, it’s a good idea to prepare all your greens ahead of time. Cut down your large branches into smaller pieces perfect for wreath-making. Group all the same branches together to quickly grab one of each while creating bundles for your wreath. You can make a wreath entirely out of one type of green for a uniform shape or add different greens for a more textured look.
3. Prepare Your Worksite
When working with evergreens, sap, debris, and dirt can make things messy. Keep your table or workstation clean with a sheet or tablecloth you don’t mind getting dirty. Also, consider wearing gloves or an apron.
4. Choose a Base
There are lots of options for wreath bases. You can make your own out of straw or use vines like grapevines or willow. There are also ones you can buy, including foam and wire wreath frames. The easiest to work with is a wire wreath.
The average wreath is an 18” wire frame, though you can go larger or smaller depending on your door size or where you’d like to hang it.
To keep your greens fresh, fill the wire frame with moss. Then, wrap green paddle wire around the moss and wire frame to hold it in place. Spritz the moss with water. If you hang the wreath outside and live in a moist, cold climate, you can skip this step. Your wreath will last just fine without it!
5. Attach Your Wire
Use a 24 gauge green paddle wire for your wreath. This wire is strong enough to hold your wreath though easy to work with. Attach one end of the wire to the wire frame. Don’t cut it; you’ll use lots to wrap around your wreath bundles!
6. Create Your Evergreen Bundles
This is where you get to let your creativity flow! Wreaths are made by making small bundles of your evergreens. Take one of each of your greens or until you have 3-5 branches in your bundle.
Hold the bundle against the wire frame. Wrap the wire around the base of the stems while holding your bundle in place. Loop around the base of the stems 2-3 times until it feels secure. Then, place your wire in the center of the ring, still attached and waiting for the next bundle.
You will continue to make small bundles and wrap them around the wreath until the whole thing is covered. Alternate where you place your bundles, going for the outer edge, inner edge, and center of the wire frame (see photo below).
Also, play around with your greenery in your bundles. Pay attention to how the branches point when placing your bundles. Keep special and beautiful stems on top of the bundle, so they don’t get covered!
7. Add Your Last Bundle
As you get closer to the end, you’ll have to tuck your last few bundles underneath the first ones (see photo below). While it may look finished at first glance, you’ll notice this section isn’t as full as the others.
Gently lift the first bundles so you can wrap the base of the last bundles underneath. You should need 2-3 bundles under the first to finish your wreath.
Once you’ve secured the last bundle, cut your wire and wrap the wire end around the wreath frame.
8. Decorate Your Wreath
It’s up to you how you want your finished wreath to look! You can leave it as it is for a foraged, green look or go all out with decorations. If you add lights, weave them to and from the center of the wire frame. This gives it a more natural look than a straight line.
For this wreath, wired dried pine cones, Southern Magnolia leaves, and eucalyptus created the final touches. Lastly, a quick bow made of ribbon matches the front door.
And that’s how to make a Christmas wreath! You can add plenty of natural decoration to the exterior of your home 365 days a year with an assortment of evergreens. And when it’s time to decorate for the holiday season and make a DIY Christmas wreath, you’ll have plenty of greenery at your fingertips for clipping.
Be sure to share your evergreen wreath creations and tag us on Instagram!
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This article was written by Holly Heuver.
