Go Green this Christmas Season. Reduce the impact of your own "carbon footprint."
If you had visited Williamsburg Colonial Village this season or past Christmas seasons, you will marvel at what people can do with natural plant materials, without artificial plastic imported objects.
You can put history at your front door by duplicating a traditional colonial wreath. There are lots of ways to do it. It is all up to your imagination and artistry.
You can easily construct your own with a grape vine wreath cage filled with floral foam and attach sprigs of greenery collected from your own backyard.
During colonial times, life was difficult. People then did not have a lot of material things. But they were ingenious. Using preserved plant material and any kind of fruit they had on hand, they fashioned beautiful, eye-catching Christmas decorations for their homes.
Wreaths and swags were made with what was growing in their back yard.
They used dried pods of okra, cotton pods, oyster shells, dried flowers from their own garden, sprigs of magnolia, boxwood, holly, pine, pine cones, and any other kind of greenery they had growing. They also embellished their wreaths with fresh pineapples, apples, oranges, and pomegranates; all made without artificial sprays, scent or color paint.
Fresh fruit was chosen for its color brilliance as well as its keeping quality when exposed to the harsh winter weather. All these are artistically wired onto a sturdy frame laden with greenery and dried native flowers. Why the pineapple, a tropical fruit, is used in their traditional wreath is a whole different story. You can find that in publications from Colonial Wiliamsburg.
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