"Giving Green"
  If you haven't any flowers that will be blooming around Christmas time, make a note in next years garden journal to grow some specifically for giving green gifts. Fresh flowers in mid-winter straight from the garden brighten up your home and make great gifts. If you have got flowers that will be blooming at the right time, try your hand at a little flower arranging and see if you can't come up with some really nice displays. For more about giving flowers try this page...Gift of Flowers
As well as cut flowers, winter plants in pots are a good present to give. Whether you buy the plants or grow them, decorate the pot with simple painted flowers or leaves, or buy a decorated pot from your local garden centre.
And in the US, Amazon is a good place to start giving green!
Collect blooms during the year and press them. Keep them safe until the winter nights start drawing in, then get creative! During the autumn months, woodlands are a great source of natural gifts. Take a bag or two with you, wrap up warm and take the kids on a ramble round your local woods. Keep your eyes peeled.
Fallen branches are a wonderful base for making Christmas table decorations. Insects live under the bark so remove all the bark before you start. Varnish it if you want, or just smooth down with a little sandpaper. Then glue on holly leaves and berries, mistletoe, dried grasses, whatever you happen to find that will work. How about having a go at sculpture? Prepare and carve the wood into a shape, or an abstract design and let your imagination go with it! Use natural materials, dried grasses etc; to decorate your masterpiece. It's a good idea to varnish the wood first if you are intending to make a longer lasting creation.
Giving Green - for Foodies:
If you know your mushrooms, collect some for a foody friend and dry them. Either hang over a range threaded onto string for a day or two, or slice and lay on baking trays, and place in a very cool oven ( the lowest temperature possible) with the door open for a few hours. Turn over after a couple of hours. Lay the sliced mushrooms on greaseproof paper if your pans are not non-stick, or spread the mushrooms onto a wire rack. When they are cool, put them into a nice jar and label.
Closer to home, you may have an excess of produce this year. Have you lots of tomatoes at the moment, and don't want to fill the freezer with tomato soups and purees? Sun dried tomatoes are a popular food, and make a lovely gift. Guaranteeing 3 or 4 days of sun is not always feasible though, so let's cheat! Cut the tomatoes in half and lay them on wire trays, sprinkle a little chopped fresh ( or dried ) basil on each tomato half. Flavour some with sea salt ( very sparingly ) some with basil, or any other herb you have available. Then, as with the sliced mushrooms, put trays into a very cool oven for a few hours, leaving the door open. Don't turn them over. After a couple of hours, take out any that are totally dried, and check every half hour or so until they are all dry. Cool completely and keep in an airtight glass container. Three sealabe glass jars full of different flavoured 'sun-dried' tomatoes make a lovely gift. There are so many gifts you can produce from the garden, it's well worth making a few notes in your garden journal for next year to grow a few Christmas presents.
Giving Green - more ideas:
For example, elderberry wine - elderflower grows well in most places, and produces very nutritious berries, perfect for wine, juices and syrups. And if you can't wait for the berries, the flowers can be used to make elderflower champagne. Scented flowers are wonderful for 'pot pourri'. Collect rose petals as they fall, and dry them. Then fill simple cotton sachets or buy pretty ceramic bowls or small trays. Create a sleep pillow. Make a small pillow from a cotton fabric. Fill the pillow with lavender flowers. The lavender pillow is placed under the pillow at night. Lavender is proven to help relax and calm the nerves and is an excellent gift for a stressed friend. If you are good at sewing, make a neck pillow, to relax into after a hard days work. Nature is simply bursting with creative ideas. Taking a moment or two now to get in touch with them could save a lot of Christmas shopping traumas. Giving Green must be best!
Happy Gardening! Grow Your Own Groceries: Producing your own food is not only rewarding but - in times of economic and environmental changes - increasingly a must! Nature provides everything the human body requires to thrive, and cultivating some of those natural products in your own back garden will not only produce the best food on the planet for you and your loved ones, it is also economical, environmentally friendly and more fun than shopping.
 Gardening is more than a hobby; it's a way of life. Even without a garden, many plants can be grown in containers, on a balcony, and indoors. A perfect 'Giving Green' gift. Order now direct from the publisher... Grow Your Own Groceries Herb Gardening: Herbs are becoming recognised more and more as superfoods, as if we didn't know that really! 'Herb Gardening' has been beautifully put together by the publisher (Crowood Press) into a well presented book with full colour photos.  Along with growing instructions for forty different herbs, there are lots of great ideas, including culinary delights and medicinal alternatives. You'll also find gardening advice as well as some ideas on planning a herb garden. Order it now direct from the
publisher... Herb Gardening
Grow Your Own Pharmacy: If, like me, you want to be able to eat the best food on the planet, grow your own!  • Clear instructions on planning, planting, growing and harvesting the fruits, vegetables and herbs required for a healthy vitamin intake. • Recipes and menus to help incorporate the fruit and vegetables into your daily diet. Granny's Book Of Good Old Fashioned Common Sense is packed full of great ideas and tips. Granny brings traditional home-making up to date with cooking, gardening, needlecrafts and even games to play with the kids...Click on the link below to order your copy.  Cooking doesn’t have to be a chore and preparing nourishing home cooked meals for the family will certainly keep them away from the goodie shelf. Gardening encourages physical exercise and a good healthy dollop of fresh air. And you can get the kids involved too. Before the days of computer games and electronic pets, children used to have fun without rummaging about in the fridge every five minutes. Enjoy a few rainy-day games and crafts of yesteryear with today’s kids. They’ll love it and so will you!
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Hyacinth Pot 