Mark Cox from Baytree Garden Centre in Weston, is giving tips on how to make a festive wreath

Regular columnist Mark Cox give tips on how to make a festive wreath – after putting his foot down at home...

Every now and again it is important as a man to put your foot down.

Last week the present Mrs Cox mooted the fact that she was going to invite Mrs Cox senior over for Christmas Day. In no uncertain terms I made it clear that I would rather have my gentleman regions removed with a rusty spoon.

So this morning, pleased with the fact that by putting my foot down I had quashed anymore talk of Mrs Senior coming to stay for Christmas I felt obliged to help my darling wife create the festive wreath that I had so woefully failed at making last year.

Thankfully the current Mrs Cox started off easy with me by asking me to head into the garden to get some ivy, and evergreen foliage that she’d use to decorate the wreath. For the last few weeks she has been stock piling all kinds of embellishments for just this moment.

Onto the kitchen table Mrs Cox laid out a sheet of plastic as to not stain or damage the table. Once all of the vital ingredients had been handily placed around the edges of the plastic she began.

There was florists wire, a wire wreath ring, moss, holly, ivy, evergreen foliage, pinecones, dried orange slices and cinnamon sticks well those were the ones that I recognised.

I was poised to step in and help at any moment but from this point on my main role was that off support and tea duty.

To begin with Mrs Cox wound about 5cm of florist wire onto a section of the wreath ring whilst making sure though that the wire was fixed on nice and tightly.

Next she took a handful of moss and spread it out over a section of the wire ring being mindful not to spread it too thinly. She pointed out

that moss has a dark underbelly and a vibrant green top.

Make sure the vibrant green is facing upwards as you carefully wind the wire around the moss and ring thus securing the moss firmly in place. Keep wiring more moss around the wreath ring until the whole ring is covered in a neat Swiss Roll of moss.

I stood and watched on as she took pieces of the evergreen foliage and layered it with pieces of holly and ivy. These layered bunches or sprigs were no larger than about 30cm.

Using the florist wire, she began winding the wire around the base of the first sprig being careful to not wind the wire too far along the sprig as she really wanted them to fan out slightly. Her aim was to ensure that the hole in the centre of the wreath did not get smaller whereas the outer edge of the wreath grew wider.

With the next sprig she overlapped this new foliage over the wired foliage underneath and continued to work this way for about 20 minutes until all of the moss was covered. At this point a cup of tea was requested which I dutifully served.

Following the beverage I was amazed by just how good the wreath looked without any real embellishments. I need not have worried as Mrs Cox’s skilled use of florist’s wire that she wound around the base of several pinecones before attaching them to the wreath looked amazing. She dabbed a little PVA glue on the pinecones before dusting with a little gold glitter.

I was so proud of what Mrs Cox had created I was all too keen to tell her. “Good” was her response before handing me a rusty spoon…..