How to... Make A Living Wreath

One of the greatest pleasures gardening provides is the opportunity to grow flowers for the home. Fill your space wisely and you'll always have something to pick, from buds and shoots in early spring, through an unfolding array of blossom, summer annuals and autumn dahlias, until the berries on the holly ripen in time for Christmas.

More gardeners than ever are growing cut flowers and there's a wide choice of seeds, which if you sow now, will give you a plentiful supply of fresh flowers in the months ahead.

But you don't have to wait for poppies and cornflowers to bloom before you can start harvesting flowers from your garden. Already there are bulbs, early blossom and budded twigs with which to make beautiful, seasonal arrangements.

But what do you do with these lovely stalks and stems once you have picked them? Plonking them into a vase seems a little inadequate when you could instead make something as beautiful as this wreath.

It has been created especially for Scottish Gardener by Emilia Robledo of Narcissus Flower School in  Edinburgh. Narcissus in Broughton Street is one of the most innovative and exciting flower shops in Edinburgh, but it is at the flower school in East Norton Place that Emilia, who was an illustrator before retraining as a florist, teaches gardeners how to make the most of the flowers that they grow and over the next four issues of the magazine, she will be giving step-by-step instructions on how to create stunning arrangements using fresh, seasonal flowers from the garden.

For the first issue of 2017 Emilia has used flowers and stems that are readily available to any gardener and she has cleverly created a wreath that evokes spring. It looks incredible, but as Emilia shows, it is deceptively simple.

So why not follow Emilia's guide and create something special for your own home.

1. You'll need stems of cherry blossom or similar; moss, florist's wire and a selection of bulbs in bud with their roots attached. Emilia has used narcissi, hyacinth, crocus and muscari.
   
   
   
2. Form the stems into a wreath shape and wire the stems together, allowing the budded tips to spill outwards from several points around the frame.
   
3. Add the moss, wiring it securely to one section of the wreath.
   
4. Place the bulbs so that they appear as if they are growing naturally out of the moss and attach them with wire.

The finished wreath can be hung up or placed on a table-top. Keep it fresh by spraying the moss daily to ensure that the bulbs and twigs do not dry out.

Narcissus Flower School in East Norton Street, Edinburgh, will be running a series of day and evening classes through April. These include 'The Spring Indoor Garden', 'Spring into Easter,' 'The Wedding Workshop' and 'All Day.  Flowers for the Spring Home.' Full details are available from www.narcissusflowers.co.uk.