Christmas gifts from your garden - pot pourri methods
Forget the acid coloured and violently scented stuff you buy in cheap gift shops. A home-made, natural pot pourri is a wonderful present and a subtle addition to your own Christmas preparations. Using flowers and petals you've gathered from your garden throughout the summer, you can make highly personalised and wonderfully inexpensive gifts that still seem luxurious. Pot pourri should be a feast for the eyes as well as the nose, so remember you can gather fallen petals, say from blown roses, and dry them, as well as seed heads from poppies and other plants that can be gilded before being added to the mix to give a bit of Christmas gold to the whole blend.
There are two ways to make pot pourri
Dry method - Mixing pot pourri by the dry method gives a brighter coloured but somewhat less scented result that the moist method. You simply mix dried, fragrant flowers and petals, dried herbs, spices, a few drops of essential oil and a fixative such as vetiver, ground orris root, gum benzoin, tonka beans or frankincense. You seal the mix in a large jar and shake every day for eight weeks or so to blend the fragrances. Suitable ingredients include rose petals and buds, hops, lemon verbena leaves, scented geranium leaves, eucalyptus leaves, tiny pine cones, cinnamon sticks, dried rosehips, nutmegs, dried lemon and orange peel and dried ginger.
Moist method - This gives a more fragrant but somewhat less highly coloured pot pourri. To begin, partially dry rose petals on newspaper for three days. Layer them with coarse salt in a screw-top jar for ten days and then add some spices, essential oils, and fixatives as above. Reseal the jar and shake daily for eight weeks. This style of pot pourri is best sued by placing it in a box and decorating the top layer with attractive dried flowers and leaves.
Christmas Articles
topiary, winter gardening, woodland swag, xmas garden party, xmas wall, xmas wildlife, advent wreath, centrepiece, cornucopia, door decoration, evergreen light, flowerpot candles, garden decorate, glowing centrepiece, holly bell, ice bowl, liqueur fruits, mistletoe, place garlands, place settings, pomegranate wreath, potpourri method, potpourri recipe, silk garland, spice wreath