We tend to focus our gardening attention on the spring and summer months and the blooms and foliage they bring, but your garden can be a surprising source of wintertime holiday decor and gift-able elements. You may already be growing plants whose red berries, glossy leaves, or warming scents can bring some nature to your holidays in unexpected ways and help you make more use of your winter garden. If they’re not growing in your garden already, pick a couple to incorporate in your springtime plantings and you’ll be set up for a garden-enhanced holiday season in 2019.

HOLIDAY DECORATIONS

The classic look for the holidays is boughs of green leaves and red berries arranged on the mantel, and toyon fills this role precisely (it’s often called Christmas Berry). Some unexpected choices that offer a similar look and would hold up well in an arrangement are native California huckleberry, oregon grape (Mahonia), and hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia). All three have red berries and nice leaves, and the hollyleaf cherry could even be harvested at its white-blossomed stage for a white and green look.

For decorating with conifers, Malcolm Hillan, member of the nature-focused business collaborative RootedSF, recommends incense cedar for its ability to grow well in our SF climate and for its outstanding scent. You can cut evergreen boughs, but also the sapling shoots sent up at the base of many conifers can be easily pulled for arrangements, or for weaving into a wreath.

NATURAL GIFT WRAP

Decorative grasses are wonderful and common gardens plants, and they’re a great resource for creative wrapping. Phoenix Jungwirth, owner of Green Earth Gardeners in San Francisco, loves to use the multi-colored, fibrous leaves of Phormiums (also known as New Zealand Flax) as gift wrap and ribbon. “I’ve made a weave of the leaves to wrap gifts,” says Phoenix, “and if you tear a multicolored leaf lengthwise into thin strips you get ribbons of various colors.”

Cordylines and sedges, especially the lime-green Carex ‘Everillo’ are similarly great for wrapping uses, and the skinnier grass and sedge leaves add appealing texture to a floral bouquet.

To go beyond wrap and ribbon, hardy herbs and fragrant flowers are lovely scented adornments to a wrapped gift. If you’re growing woody herbs like rosemary, lavender, thyme, or even a sturdy ornamental sage like Cleveland Sage, pick a few small sprigs, tie with a long grass blade, and tuck into the bow on a gift. This tiny bouquet can be enjoyed briefly like standard wrapping, or hung and dried.

SIMPLE GIFTS FROM THE GARDEN

For your gift recipients who have a little space to grow something, a packet of homegrown seeds, tucked into a card, is a heartfelt gift. “It shows you thought ahead and it brings the promise of beauty in the future,” says Elisa Baier of Small Spot Gardens. To accomplish this you have to resist the urge to deadhead all your spent flowers and instead leave a few to let the seeds dry out. Elisa recommends California poppies for this- simply let the flower grow into a long, skinny seed pod, leave the pod be until it splits open, then scrape out the seeds. Remember to label the seed packet when gifting it.

For the recipient who prefers an easy indoor plant, a potted succulent cutting is simple and pretty, and it’s actually surprisingly easy to take cuttings of your own succulents to share with others.

And for someone who would rather not receive the responsibility of caring for a plant, homemade herbal tea is super simple and personal. If you’re growing a fragrant plant like mint, lemon verbena, or rosemary, cut some sprigs, wash and dry well, hang upside down for a couple weeks to dry out and then package appealingly, maybe alongside a charming tea infuser. In a world of gift cards, a homemade gift like this is memorable.