A Wreath, Handmade By You
The Wreathing Workshop at Oak Hill's Hort and Pott is a must for any gardener or amateur artisan who'd love to learn a new craft. Classes will be held on Saturdays from 1pm to 3pm, on December 2, 9, and 16, 2017, and you can sign up here.
The class itself makes a great early holiday gift for anyone who needs an afternoon to mellow out with some balsalm branches. Plus, wreath you'll create there is totally gift-able (also very keep-able!). That said, if getting up to your elbows in pine needles doesn't sound enticing, you can just buy one of Todd Carr's ready-made, beautiful, one-of-a-kind wreaths.
Todd, the founder of Hort & Pott and former Senior Gardening Editor at Martha Stewart Living, starts the class by leading a tour through lush piles of evergreen branches, seed pods, pine cones, and winterberries.
Then Todd whips up a perfect little wreath, making it look super easy.
Making wreaths, it turns out, isn't that hard, but the class is totally worthwhile because wreathing is one of those things makes more sense in person. It was helpful to have Todd around to give advice and trim branches into optimum-sized piles. My classmate, Aubyn, set up the most beautiful spread of evergreens, blue juniper berries, tiny pine cones, and spiky, speckled sticks.
I cautiously wired together winterberries, juniper, and pine.
Once I got the knack, I really enjoyed the process of placing each little bouquet of branches and wiring it just so.
For a quick afternoon project, the results were pretty spectacular!
If I had more time, I would've stayed to work on some grapevine wreaths. Todd's examples are works of art, adorned with unexpected bits of nature, like foraged black tree fungus and an abandoned wasp nest. They look breathtaking in his barn, but would be the perfect country touch on a Brooklyn brownstone door.
Hort and Pott is located at 7829 NY-81 in Oak Hill, NY. The shop is open by appointment and most weekends from 10am to 4pm. Sign up for 2017 wreath-making workshops here, or check here to see if workshops are scheduled for the seasons to come.
