Baubles, bells and berries

Steffie Shields enjoys winter garden decorations.

’Tis the season to be merry! Clearing away debris and desiccated foliage is a satisfying, simple job in the garden. These days, my body creaks a bit more than I would like, but the repetitive bending process allows my mind to clear. I enjoy noticing the natural baubles Mother Nature has miraculously hung around our garden.

Among some giant ferns and summer-flowering perennials near the pond, a small clump of campanula is allowed to escape the chop. Campanula latifolia, the giant bellflower also known as the wide-leaved bellflower, is easy to grow whether in a herbaceous border in full sun or naturalised in partial woodland shade. Its erect spires display nodding, bell-shaped violet-blue flowers to charm the eye. By November these have long since lost colour, shrivelled and died. However, the remaining shrunken skeletal form is fascinating and ornamental.

When backlit by the sun, they are reminiscent of tiny fairy bells or even sparkling fairy lights. Look closer, those minuscule winter baubles are sometimes hung with silken spider webs.

A magical hoar frost descended at the beginning of last December as the cheerful, cerise Rosa ‘Dorothy Perkins’ was still blooming. The frosty crystals successfully edged the leaves and petals like diamonds. Such surprise gifts in the middle of winter are priceless!

Talking of sparkle, the traditional favourite Christmas ornament is holly. The dazzling combination of polished, evergreen leaves and bright red berries shining in the sunshine always lifts spirits, especially when temperatures sink below freezing. Early Celtic mythology found sacred meaning in the holly tree as a symbol of peace and goodwill. Holly is revered in various cultures and crosses language barriers with the promise of protection, renewal and prosperity.

Listen to the words of that famous carol ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ to appreciate how Christians adopted holly as a significant symbol of Jesus Christ. The sharp spines recall his crown of thorns, while the red berries represent his blood. Holly’s strong and resilient nature in the harshest of environments is equally inspirational, and as if immortal is symbolic of eternal life.

Our feathered friends also appreciate dense, protective holly foliage for nesting, while those sharp thorns deter predators. Thankfully those pesky marauding squirrels seem to ignore red berries. They find a million ways to get at the various bird nuts and seeds in the supposedly squirrel-proof birdfeeders I put out. So it is reassuring to spy plenty of berry clusters and know that our gardens have plenty of food for birds.

The previous owners of our garden wisely planted both male and female common holly, plus one variegated ilex and the more unusual holly, Ilex aquifolium ‘J. C. van Tol’. Whatever the weather, even in mild winters, this holly never fails to carry abundant clusters of large berries, and being thornless is easy to pick, and therefore naturally preferred by flower arrangers. If you are short of ideas for Christmas gifts, I can think of nothing better than the classic holly tree, especially with several choice hybrid varieties nowadays in nurseries and garden centres.

Sometimes the simplest of presents can mean the most. Even packets of seeds or bulbs make unexpected small presents, bringing promising hope and pleasure of new life in a garden. A handful of those small winter bulbs, Ornithogalum umbellatum ‘Star of Bethlehem’ would be an appropriate Christmas gift for any gardener. If planted about two inches apart and some five inches deep, come late spring/early summer, delicate, small and pure white star-shaped flowers will appear above draped, strappy leaves very similar to wild garlic – but without that odour! Belonging to the lily family, they will suddenly appear as if tiny Christmas miracles, and keep on giving amazing joy year on year!

Have you seen the most surreal of garden ornaments – giant snowdrops fashioned in steel?! They are amusingly decorative and successfully bring light to those darkest winter days. Adding reflective silver baubles to a traditional red and green door wreath will have the same welcome effect.

No Christmas creep for me! I will wait until about 22nd December to cut those low dangling strands of holly to decorate the house. Popping a curving twig or two above each picture frame takes no time at all, and I feel Christmas has almost arrived. Then, as soon as the holly and ivy are placed either side of the crib, baby Jesus laid on the straw, and a red candle lit with care, let the festivities begin!

Wishing you and all children everywhere Christmas blessings and delight in every home and garden, with fairy-light sparkle in eyes young and old, and let us all pray for much-needed peace on earth in the coming New Year.

The following Tennyson poem reprinted here and first published in 1850 seems more than appropriate for the Christmas issue, particularly in the current climate.

Christmas and New Year Bells

The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controlled me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touched with joy,
The merry, merry bells of Yule.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the false, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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