How To Make A Christmas Centrepiece On A Budget

How To Make A Christmas Centrepiece On A Budget


Use your fruit bowl to make a stunning natural arrangement

A stunning Christmas centrepiece can be quite easily and cheaply made using just household items, a church candle and fresh and dried vegetation from the garden or a walk in the countryside. The centrepiece in this video would go well down the middle of a table, in the window or on a sideboard and is really cheap and easy to make, the only cost involved would be for a church candle and a couple of small rounds of oasis. Everything else is in daily use or foraged from the garden or countryside.

 

 You will need:

  • wooden bowl
  • potting grit
  • large church candle
  • 2 small round pieces of wet oasis
  • conifer branches
  • hydrangea heads
  • dried teasel heads; cones or any large seed heads
  • sprays of crab apples; or sprays of artificial Christmas berries or flowers
  • gold florists spray

The bowl used in the video is an old dough bowl sourced from a charity shop and usually filled with fruit. Place some potting grit into the bowl and settle in the church candle, as the bottom of the bowl is not quite level we used the potting grit to stabilise the heavy church candle. Pre-soak the oasis and place either side of the candle.  If you are using a round bowl you may need 4 small rounds of oasis or if it is a small bowl just cut the rounds in half. Start with the larger branches of conifer, place into the oasis to cover the grit and come over the edge of the bowl. On top of the conifer place the hydrangea heads; Nik has given these a light spray of gold florists paint.

Once the hydrangeas are in place start positioning the smaller pieces; in the video Nik uses the dry teasel heads but you could substitute these for poppy heads, eryngium or just cones. The final touch is to add some sprays of lovely red crab apples to give a bit of colour, but you could also use some sprays of artificial Christmas flowers or berries. Once you have the arrangement completed just stand a couple of metres away, walk around it and check for any gaps or anything that looks unbalanced and just tweak until you’re happy with the composition.

 We also have a video showing how to make a really easy arrangement using a silver 3 tier cake stand, but you can adapt the ideas to suit whatever materials you have to hand. The cake stand arrangement uses artificial flowers and baubles but you could easily substitute these for cones, dried seed heads or fresh greenery and berries. 


Angela Slater

Daughter of a farmer and market gardener so have always had a connection with the outdoors, whether it was keeping animals or producing fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. Along with my work at Hayes Garden World I also have a smallholding, mainly breeding rare breed pigs. I gained an HND and BSc in Conservation and Environmental Land Management, as a result I am an ardent environmentalist and have a keen interest in environmentally friendly gardening. In my time at Hayes I worked for several years in the Outdoor Plant and Houseplant areas.