Bringing the Outdoors In for Sustainable Holiday Style

For holiday decorations that are sustainable, eco-friendly, cost-effective and provide a natural and inviting ambiance in your home, look no further than the great outdoors and its treasures.

Take a walk through your garden, the woods, or on the beach to collect gifts from nature. Foraging is both fun and enables you to create decorations with a lower environmental impact compared to plastic or synthetic decor that ends up in landfills.

For example, you can dress up your fireplace mantel with evergreens, pinecones, magnolia leaves, or pheasant feathers. Bowls of paperwhite bulbs or amaryllis finished with a dressing of moss can be welcoming in the entry to your home. Create a centerpiece from a hollowed-out log adorned with cedar seedlings, moss and winterberry branches, or other items pleasing to the eye. Add the warmth of candles, too.

To make a Christmas wreath or spray, you can use a base — such as a grapevine or wire frame — and attach bunches of fresh evergreens, pinecones, or other ornaments using twine. Add a festive bow and hang.

Fortunately, to help you get started, there are many how-to videos for making all these holiday decorations online, especially on YouTube. You will also get ideas for using items you already own, like glass vases and bowls.

Don’t forget our overwintering birds by hanging pinecones covered with peanut butter and impressed with seeds from tree branches. Our feathered friends will eagerly eat both the high-calorie peanut butter and the seeds as they search for the food they need to survive during the cold months. Thus they will continue their roles as pollinators, as well as help control natural pests.

Why not invite neighbors over for a group project that will create an outdoor activity and learning experience for all? Celebrate this holiday season with the bounty of Mother Nature and caring for the creatures that protect our environment.