Christmas in the Garden, Vol. II

frosty days that fade to moony dark

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While the Christmas holidays find many of us traveling, many others are hunkered down at home, making stock, basting turkeys, mulling wine, and generally doing the good, delicious work that marks the season. This far north, there’s very little left in the garden of culinary use: my mustard greens and kale are now ice sculptures, the herbs have all fallen and faded, and tomatoes are a distant dream. But as I’ve often said before, these frosty days that fade quickly to a moony dark are some of my favorites, and I have no real envy for gardeners who are burdened by year-round growing seasons. Much as I’d love to harvest lemons in January, the necessary pause of winter allows for a breath of rest, some clear-eyed planning, and the delicious pang of anticipation. If you don’t have winter, you can’t have snowdrops, and I consider that an even trade. Also, I like wearing coats.

Nonetheless, the spartan pleasures of deep winter are still ahead of us (technically it’s still autumn for most of December) and, in the meantime, there are tables to be decorated. For those who enjoyed last year’s catalog of winter plants with decorative potential, here’s a second volume. If nothing else, these thoughts can give you an excuse to put on a parka, get outside, and try your hand at making something beautiful in the spun-gold sun and bracing air.

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Birch

Nothing says Robert Frost country quite like white-barked birch, that prolific pioneer tree that hangs over pathways and along wooded borders like a guardian spirit. Several varieties grow north of Boston, including the hauntingly pretty River Birch with its angular threefold trunks, fascinating branch patterns, and dunny bark. But none is as useful for Christmas decorating as the Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera), which loves to cast down big branches in the winter wind. These tend to shatter by trailsides, where the aesthetically-minded hiker can easily pick up a few. The Classical Roots students and I did exactly this a few weeks ago to gather ingredients for our potted winter displays. If you’re dealing with larger pieces, they can be dried in a woodshed then split with a hatchet—they tend to come apart very clean into long half-moons—then used in pots, bundled in twine by doors, or stacked into piles that hint of wood stoves. Best of all, their bark makes a supreme natural fire starter so, once the holidays are over, you can ring in the new year with a good blaze.

Winterberry

Actually a species of holly, Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is abundant in northern woodlands in the U.S. and has the winsome quality of deciduousness, meaning it drops its leaves in fall, leaving those crimson berries exposed and stark against the boughs. The effect is so striking that Winterberry has become a mainstay of high-end garden stores in the States, where clusters of it go for a pretty penny. Yet there’s no reason you can’t make a day of it and go for a winter hike to gather some yourself. I have a good memory of taking my cross-country skis into the local woods a few years ago, basket in hand, and stopping wherever I saw its bursts of cardinal-red berries to clip off a few to take home. It was an almost obnoxiously cheerful experience to come skiing home with a basket of Winterberry—never mind that I caught a nasty cold as a result. If you do harvest these yourself, you can put the clippings in a little water to retain the berries’ glossy plumpness, though I think they look just as nice when they dry out into a muted, moody carmine.

Spruce

The Norway Spruce (Picea abies) is the iconic Christmas tree, with its cascading emerald-green needles and elegant golden-tinged cones. Though not native to North America, it is widely planted here in Christmas tree farms and can be found running feral through our woodlands. A significant number of Americans (23%) still display live Christmas trees during the season, and I personally couldn’t do without the smell of a real spruce in the house during December. No candle or—God forbid—air freshener can match that strangely stirring, rugged, mountainous scent, like a cold wind off a ridgeline. But even the spruce aficionados among us can settle for the central display of a whole tree and forget the decorative potential of the clippings, which are always generated in abundance when we’re bringing in the tree and trimming it to fit into a stand. These can be potted in water and placed on tables, hung from doorways or sideposts, draped over table runners, or woven into rustic wreaths. And it’s a satisfying thing to make sure no shaving of the tree is wasted. Our Christmas holiday is, after all, its act of supreme sacrifice, and using every vestige of the spruce is a good, liturgical reminder that all deaths matter, and that some are redemptive—even evergreen.

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