I was at The Home Depot the other day and noticed they were selling 100 feet of cedar garland for $54. Wowza! I don’t know about you, but spending $54 for something I can get for free in my backyard {with a little effort} is kind of nuts.
As you may know, I have a love/hate relationship with the cedar trees in my backyard. I hate having to rake up the mess, but come Christmas… those little cedar branches on the ground are suddenly my new best friend. 🙂
If you’ve never made your own cedar garland before, it’s seriously a piece of cake. It took me about 45 minutes to make a 20 feet of garland start to finish. YOU CAN DO THIS. Trust me. Save yourself some money, honey.
Supplies Needed to Make a Cedar Garland
- Small Cedar Branches
- 22 Gauge wire
- Wire cutters
If you have OCD like me you’ll want to put your branches in neat little piles according to length. Totally not necessary, but hey, I think it comes in handy when selecting the next piece to use. At least that is what I tell myself. 🙂
Take two ceder branches, wrap floral wire around the top 1/3 of the branches and give it about 3-4 good, tight twists.
Add additional branches {2-3 at a time} now wrapping the floral wire around the bottom 1/3 of the branch as you go to secure the greens until you have about a 5 – 7 foot length.
Since I was making this cedar garland for my kitchen window I needed about 20 feet.
Once I made 3 {5-7 foot} lengths of garland I wired them all together and let the garland dry out a bit overnight in the garage so I didn’t have wet greenery brushing up against my white window trim in the kitchen.
Now all I need to do is find some twinkle lights and I’m good to go.
Thanks for the free cedar garland Mother Nature. 😉
~Mavis
This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.
Karen @ On the Banks of Salt Creek says
Growing up we had a lot of cedar trees and some holly trees. We would cut fresh pieces and decorate our mantle above our fireplace. Now that we live on a farm we have tons of trees to pick from but we don’t have a fireplace 🙁 However I could certainly drape them as you have done. Thanx for the reminder.
Kristina Z says
I sometimes attach the boughs to a length of rough twine, just for a little extra support.
Peggy says
It looks great, and believe it or not, I’m making an outdoor ‘Christmas Tree’ with the skeleton or ‘trunk’ of the tree the remaining stalks of some huge sunflowers that grew in a circle in my front yard this year! I can’t justify spending money on garland either, especially since I too have the resources to make my own, and get a couple of trees pruned at the same time! I”ve tied together the stalks getting tighter as I went up to make a cone shape, and now I”m in the process of attaching pine branches I’m getting from pruning some large trees to make the green ‘tree’. We’ll throw on some lights and some homemade garland of popcorn and some fruits the birds can eat and my plan is to keep it going for the winter. In my mind it looks great!
Carol says
Perfect! I love the look in your kitchen, Mavis!
Mavis says
Thanks! Me too!