How To Make a Forsythia Wreath

Some days are meant to be spent outside, and today was one of them for me and my daughter. As we took a walk down our road, admiring the forsythia in bloom, I had a thought about trying to recreate a forsythia wreath I saw hanging on someone’s door the other day. I grabbed my pruners and some twine and clipped some branches. Usually this is the point where I go online and search for the perfect tutorial. Not today. Like I said, this day was made to be spent outside, so I figured I’d wing it.

This isn’t really a tutorial, more like a suggestion, and I encourage everyone to sit outside on a sunny spring day and make one of these however they wish. As you can see from my final result, it would have benefited from many more branches and a bit more time. But the forsythia bush was small and there was a hungry mouth demanding lunch, and the somewhat sparse and ragged final product matches the embarrassingly peeling paint on the front of my house quite nicely anyway.

Materials
• Pruners
• Garden Twine
• Forsythia branches

1. Snip off some nice long thin forsythia branches. I also cut a few other small saplings, both because I didn’t have a huge forsythia bush to cut from, and because I thought some green would look good amongst the yellow.

2. Tie together a few branches, tip to end, to sort of make one long branch. Cut away the bottom of any branch that is thicker than a pencil. This will help you to get a good circle.

3. Form the long branches into a circle while wrapping the branches around each other. Tie off the end if it needs be tied to hold it together. Don’t worry too much about side branches that stick out yet.

4. Once the circle is nice and tight, take the butt end of a free branch and slide it in between two branches in the circle. If it has a small side branch near the butt end, even better — this will help it lock in place.

5. Wrap the new branch into the circle. Repeat with other branches.

6. At this point you can trim some of the smaller side branches and incorporate them into the wreath, or leave them be for a wilder look.

Additional Notes:
This wreath has a pretty short shelf life, especially if it hangs in the sun, so if you are making it for a special occasion, do it as late as possible. After seeing my wreath wilt considerably in four hours I have come to the conclusion that the wreath I saw that inspired me was made of fake flowers.

(Images: Richard Popovic)