Handmade, natural decoration ideas with dried fruit for Christmas

Since we’re always looking for a way to elevate our collective spirits around the holiday season, how about focusing some attention on using the bounty of the garden to sprinkle a little botanical humanity around the house?

At Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, our staff garden wizards have been busy all summer and fall, prepping all the botanical bounty of the growing season to deck the halls for our annual Yuletide at Yew Dell, which takes place Fridays and Saturdays from Nov. 29 to Dec. 21.

From pressed flowers to unusual fruits, dried peppers, and nuts and berries, the garden offers a long list of fun and unique bits that can bring the garden inside for the holidays. Here’s a list of fun options to try at home:

For last year’s Yuletide event, our staff decorated a large tree with nothing but dried flowers. From grasses to hydrangeas, this is an easy, no-brainer, and requires no special equipment and not a ton of time. One of the great benefits of this option is that flowers of both will dry in place, right on the plant. All you have to do is walk out the back door with a pair of pruners in hand and harvest away. You can wire them to wreaths, stick them between the branches of cut trees, or tie them up with some holiday ribbon and drop them in a vase - the sky’s the limit.

And believe me, if my 11 thumbs can make this work, so can yours.

This one takes a little more planning and prep but it's not too late even now. Pressing fresh flowers is a great way to provide material for decoration ideas. To press/preserve small flowers you can pick them now and press them between sheets of newspaper or paper towels with a few books on top to weigh it all down. Give them a week or two (depending on how juicy each flower is) and they’re ready to go. Ornaments made by embedding dried flowers in clear epoxy make a great display and are easily made using widely available craft kits.

This one has gotten out of hand lately at Yew Dell. Sayde Heckman, our garden and arboretum manager, literally blew up one dehydrator this year ... but that’s another story entirely. But they’ve been collecting just about anything and everything that could be dried, sliced, drilled, and/or otherwise processed to make a wide range of garlands and ornaments.

A few favorites this year include:

Okra: Most people sensibly harvest their okra pods when they’re nice and small and tender — at least those people who actually consume the stuff. The rest of us know okra makes a much better tree ornament than a soup ingredient. We let the okra grow to gigantic pod proportions —6 inches, 8 inches, etc. And of course, at that scale, they more resemble balsa wood than any edible food product. But when dried and strung together they make what we will be patenting as "Okrasickles!" You can send royalty checks after the new year, if you like.

Hardy Orange: Yes Virginia, there is an orange that grows in Kentucky — and survives the winter! The botanically named Poncirus trifoliata (or Citrus trifoliata if you’re a taxonomy wonk), despite being entirely unpalatable, makes cool little golf ball-sized oranges that can be strung and hung as a garland. They can be hung singly as ornaments in their own right, wired into wreaths, or, sliced and run through a dehydrator and strung with other goodies for a unique display. Like it a little spicier? Dehydrate a string of habanero peppers!

Acorns, pine cones, etc.: Those things that mature fairly dry can be hung just as they are, strung, glued, or otherwise attached to just about anything that can’t outrun you and a glue gun.

Now listen to the doctor. Go outside and start collecting. And maybe put a new dehydrator on your holiday gift list. Sayde recommends the extended warranty.

Paul Cappiello is the executive director at Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, 6220 Old Lagrange Road, yewdellgardens.org.