Christmas wreaths: a history and a masterclass

Passing through the twinkling, foliage-covered entrance to The Ivy Clifton Brasserie, with its grand frontage looking out over the traditional Clifton Village tree, decorated to the very top in The Mall Gardens, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

In an opulently-decorated back room with marble finishes and two mid-century modern chandeliers, Jill and Sarah Woodall from Bristol Flower School greet everyone and invite us to take a seat around the big central table, a basket of tools and equipment in front of each place setting. We’re not here for dinner, though we can hear the tinkling laugh of the diners next door, and delicious canapés keep appearing in front of us, along with a flute of champagne each. We’re here for the serious business of making a Christmas wreath.

Jill Woodall demonstrates how to create the wreath in the opulent setting of The Ivy Clifton Brasserie

Christmas wreaths have a long and interesting history, Jill explains, taking us back to the era of pagans and druids, who brought evergreen boughs into their homes to celebrate the magic of the plants that continued to stay green through the winter while everything around shed their leaves. Come the Roman Empire, wreaths were placed on the door when a baby boy was born, and this was adopted by Christians to reflect everlasting life, utilising the symbol of the circle.

The dozen of us start with a copper ring and a scroll of ribbon, which we use to cover the frame entirely as a base for adding more layers. Champagne is quaffed and canapés scoffed as we get stuck into this test of manual dexterity – not realising that there are far harder challenges to come. “If this doesn’t make me feel festive, I don’t know what will,” one participant quips to her friend, who is wearing a sparkly Christmas jumper.

The wreath begins to take shape with the addition of foliage

With soft jazz on in the background, and the soft pop of another champagne bottle being expertly opened, we flesh out the first layer of the wreath with cool, damp moss. A man at the end of the table finishes shaping his moss way before the rest of us. “I’ve found my niche! This is what I was born to do!” he exclaims, and his friend looks up with surprise. “You’re done already?” she says as the rest of us struggle. “You’re a ninja!”

We place our hands into hessian sacks to pull out foliage that smells beautiful – cuttings of laurel, cupressus, sugar pine, juvenile holly and ivy with its small black berries. We begin to bind each piece onto our bed of moss, building up the layers one piece at a time, getting more proficient as the three-hour session goes on.

The wreaths and greenery cover the table

As the main bulk of the foliage is added in, there are pine needles all over the crisp white tablecloth and snipped pieces of string everywhere. “We did warn them we’d make a mess!” laughs Sarah as she salvages wreath after wreath with good suggestions for holly placement – obeying the Fibonacci sequence of thirds and fifths. There’s certainly more to this wreath-making malarky than meets the eye.

Working with our hands is enjoyable, and touching all the natural materials is making us all happy, relaxed and chatty – and the champagne is probably helping too. As a final touch, we pierce dried oranges that smell beautiful, wrap wire around a trio of pine cones, and create sweet-smelling parcels of cinnamon, bound with raffia.

The final touches: dried oranges and pine cones

The most challenging task is left until the end – creating a huge triple-layered decorative bow – but the less said about my efforts there, the better. We all stand up for a group photo, posing with our completed wreaths and congratulating each other on our efforts, buoyant to have created something so special and festive from nothing but a bit of elbow-grease and some foliage.

Bristol Flower School’s second Christmas wreath workshop takes place at The Ivy Clifton Brasserie on Tuesday Dec 12 from 6pm. Visit www.bristolflowerschool.co.uk to see their full range of workshops in 2018.