20 day countdown, Deck the Hall with Fresh Greens

Decking your halls can be easier than you think and you can make your garlands look like a pro make them with a simple tip.

Your holiday garden center will sell many types of evergreen garland. The most economical is white pine roping garland.  It comes in single and a double width. The double will be fuller like the one I used above.

It's easy to make the white pine roping more elegant and textural with a simple technique for adding more greenery.  Here's how:

First hang the roping as is on your bannister,  or around the windows and doors. Use green florist wire ( (or household wire) to wrap and tie to the bannister. Once the roping is in place you can move on to the fun part.

You will need multiple 6" floral picks for making small bundles of mixed greens.

Use the wire on the end of the pick to tie on small multiple sprigs of contrasting greenery. You can buy bundles of greenery from the garden center or cut sprigs from bushes in your yard using greens like mountain laurel, rhododendron, boxwood, privet, cedar or holly.  Choose three greens that contrast each other nicely. You can even use  2 or just 1 contrasting green to create a fuller and pretty style roping.  No rules in creating your own look.

These are the greens I used in the garland above:

                                                                           Lemon leaf

         Seeded Eucalyptus

       Variegated Holly

Wire and bundle the greenery together combining all varieties on each pic.  Push the pics into the roping approximately every 20 inches or where desired. 

In the end you can tie on some pretty ribbon, I love the green Velvet!.  No need for fussy bows, keep it simple and let the ends hang loosely done.

The project above was styled by Karin Lidbeck Brent for Good Housekeeping magazine. All photos by Michael Partenio