Two-week decluttering challenge!

DIY Lavender wreath.

This week I have once again realized that my garden is my happy place! Lavender has always been one of my absolute favourites! I suppose it is because it reminds me of my late Ouma Laslap.  

Since we have moved into a house with a bigger garden, I've been trying my very best to grow lavender with success. It's been trial and error so far, but after a visit and some amazing advice from the staff at Lavender SA, on the outskirts of Pretoria, I have finally managed to grow a beautiful hedge in the past six months. So I am super excited to share this project with you!

I bought these gorgeous and very healthy French lavender plants at a very good price from Lavender SA. After planting them, I pruned them as advised by the helpful staff at Lavender SA, and again three months after planting.

 

Now, six months later, I had my first proper lavender harvest! I was pleasantly surprised by the number of flowers they produced after only six months!

After pruning them again, I just had to use these gorgeous flowers for something and decided to make a wreath.

For this project you will need the following:

• pruning shears
• lavender cuttings
• grapevine wreath
• florist wire
• scissors
• fabric or ribbon

I started by sorting the flowers from the rest of the stems. Then, arranged them in bundles of 10 flowers each, wrapped the wire around each bundle and cut the stems shorter.  

We even found a pretty, little pink flower crab spider between the cuttings. After causing mass hysteria in the house (daddy and big sister can't stand creepy crawlies) we kindly released the little fellow back into the garden.  

Before attaching the bundles to the wreath, I loosely placed them on top of the wreath to see if I had enough bundles to cover the entire circumference of the wreath. (I used between 4 and 5) bundles to cover about 10cm of the wreath.)

I then attached one long piece of wire to one of the vines and placed the bundle of flowers on top of the wire "knot" so that the flowers covered the wire entirely. By using an "overhand stitch" as if sewing it onto the wreath, attach the bundles to the wreath. Now, just repeat the process, making sure that you cover all of the wire, every time you add a new bundle.  

After doing the full circle, I realized that in some places the wire still showed, so I just covered it up with smaller bundles.

To round it off, tie a piece of ribbon or fabric around and make a large bow.  Trim the excess off and let it dry on a flat surface before hanging it.

And voila!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and I’ll keep you posted on all the other projects I have in mind with the lavender I still have left!  I hope to use all of the trimmings, flowers and seeds!