Easy, Natural Gift Wraps

HGTV's Rebecca Kolls, host of Rebecca's Garden, shows how to dress up your holiday gifts with materials from the garden.

Figure A

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Wrapping paper, ribbon and package decorations never looked this good--or as natural. Rebecca's Garden host Rebecca Kolls demonstrates some easy ways to wrap your packages using materials straight from the garden.

The main foundation for all these gifts is brown paper from reused grocery sacks. Take a grocery sack, cut the bottoms off and cut it open. Turn it inside out. Wrap the package with the paper, then tie it with silk ribbon. (The silk ribbon will break down, or biodegrade. You can also use raffia.) Keep the ribbon flat, but instead of tying a bow, set it aside and work on the wreath.

To make hers, Rebecca uses artemesia (figure A). You could use anything with a flexible stem, like boxwood, rosemary or cedar from the garden. Form stems of the natural material into a small wreath. (It can be secured with a string to hold its form.)

Figure B

Pull the ends of the ribbon through the center part of the wreath, center it and glue the ends down on the package (figure B). A couple drops of glue on each side are all that's needed to secure the ribbon in place.

Figure C

Now you can add dried rosebuds (which can be purchased the craft store) and glue them onto the wreath (figure C). Instead of rosebuds, you can also use star anise, pine cones, greenery or red raffia; all look great.

Figure D

Other options include:

Tie a small terra-cotta seed pot onto the gift (figure D). The pot can be reused later.

Make a wreath, made of pepperberry and grapevine here, to decorate large-sized gifts. Not only will it decorate the package, the wreath can be detached and hung in the house.

Figure E

For the golfer on your list, dig out some dried moss to simulate a divet of grass. Attach it with a golf tee and ball to the gift (figure E).

Don't have bows? Evergreen sprigs are the perfect bow replacement.

Figure F

Embellish homemade gift tags made of torn pieces of construction paper with dried fruit (in cross sections), leaves or evergreen clippings (figure F).

And the best part, not only are your gifts naturally beautiful, all the materials go into the compost heap as a gift for Mother Nature.