7 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH ROSES THIS CHRISTMAS
Go Natural with Home Grown Roses
Instead of berries, frosted cones and holly for festive decorations, go natural with home-grown roses. Red roses are particularly festive, especially the hybrid tea roses with elegant blooms like ‘Mr Lincoln’, ‘Red and Fragrant’ or ‘Five Roses’.
Make a rose table-wreath. Find a shallow circular container, fill it with florist oasis and soak over-night. Push in short-stemmed blooms and other greenery to your liking. Keep it in the refrigerator until just before your guests take their seats.
Use roses as placeholders. Take twine and tie up a spray of small blooms or a single bloom with a pretty leaf. Add a hand-written name card and your guests will feel extra-special. It is best to do this as a finishing touch, with a bottle of water on hand so that your guest can ‘save’ the rose and take it home.
Simple elegance: set the table with a row of beautiful bottles, each with a single stemmed rose.
Make a few roses go further by adding foliage as a filler. Silvery leaves always go well with roses, as do herbs like basil, lavender, rosemary and Santolina.
Use dried petals as decor on your macaroons
Crush fragrant, dried rose petals (for a quick fix, microwave petals and then use a blender to powderise them) as garnish to your favourite Christmas cookies
Did you know?
The best time to cut garden roses is early or late, rather than in the heat of the day. Have a bucket of water with you so that you can put the stems into water immediately after cutting.
Change the water every two or three days, especially if you have not stripped off the leaves as the water becomes murky.
Chrysal flower food is better than vinegar and sugar for extending the life of the flowers.
When cutting the stems make a long-slanted cut. The bigger the wound the more water the stems take up.
To get the balance right, the length of the flower stem should not be more than double the height of the vase.