The popular holiday shop at the regional high school in Falls Village, Conn., is already pretty much sold out of wreaths and trees, a week earlier than normal. We will leave it to the sociologists to figure out why.
There are of course other places to buy trees and excellent handmade wreaths (including the Sweethaven Farm pop up shop in Salisbury, Conn., behind the pharmacy).
But those who traditionally shop at Housatonic Valley Regional High School treasure the beautiful handmade wreaths created during two “production nights,” when students and alumni gather in the agricultural education department and create a giant wreath (and roping) assembly line.
Pine sap is everywhere. The smell is incredibly delicious.
For anyone who has ever wanted to make their own wreath, production night is the way to learn from the masters.
And who are those masters?
The reigning champions right now are Cricket Jacquier and Wayne Jenkins, both of whom have decades of experience.
Look for the video online
Because there was no production night this year due to COVID-19, Jenkins generously offered to share his expertise with our readers — and with students in the agricultural education department, who watched the workshop on a live video feed.
The instructions in this article are very abbreviated and give the general information only. To get the full benefit of Jenkins’ wisdom, watch the hour-long video on our website at www.tricornernews.com. Ag ed teacher David Moran oversaw and organized the workshop and video feed.
The first thing you need to make a wreath is a frame. Jenkins is from the old school and says a sturdy wire clothes hanger can be twisted into a circle, with the hook used to hang the wreath up.
For the wreaths sold at the high school, the frame is a crimped metal form that can be purchased from Kelco (www.kelcomaine.com) or Alders Wholesale Florist (www.alderswholesaleflorist.com). You can also purchase forms at craft shops such as Michael’s but they usually sell less sturdy metal forms that have two concentric circles, not a single circle, which makes it a little harder to tie the greens in tightly.
If you want to make a 2-foot wreath, buy a 1-foot wreath form.
Firs last the longest
For the greens, Jenkins and Moran said the best are the firs, because they don’t drop their needles as quickly as, for example, the long-needled white pines.
Moran particularly loves a green that is relatively rare in this part of the world called the concolor fir; it has needles that are both long and strong. Other good varieties are balsam, fraser and noble. Eastern red cedar can work well too.
“Firs hold their needles the best,” explained Jenkins, who worked for decades at the Great Mountain Forest, a teaching forest that is in both Norfolk and Falls Village, Conn.
For the 2-foot wreath Jenkins made in this workshop, he used about 8 pounds of evergreen sprigs. The greens had been pre-cut into 6-to-8-inch lengths and they filled a very large plastic tub. Very little was left over at the end.
To tie the greens onto the wreath form, Jenkins used a sturdy 22-gauge florist wire, which you can find at any craft store.
The wires definitely can cut your hands (and the sap can get sticky) so even though Jenkins’ hands were bare, it’s a good idea to wear gardening gloves that are sturdy enough to protect you but flexible enough for you to grab and tie the wire as you go.
Start with a loop
Jenkins likes to tie a metal loop at his starting point, which not only reminds him where he started, but also creates a hook for hanging the wreath. It also gives you something to tie your wire to as you start and end your wreath.
The key to making a stable and sturdy wreath, Jenkins says, is to tie the wire very tightly around the base of your handful of greens. To do this, you want the wreath lying flat on the table as you tie.
If you hold the wreath in the air as you’re tying it, he warns, you’ll get wobble.
A heavy wreath
Jenkins started with a big handful of six to eight sprigs of fir (and each sprig was about 6 to 8 inches long).
“I like a heavy wreath” he said of the amount of greens he was using. And indeed, when it was done, this was a thick, luxuriant wreath.
“But everyone is different,” he said.
He likes to mix several kinds of greens in each bundle. He used the concolor in every handful but mixed it up with some of the other types of fir.
Lay the first bundle down on the wreath frame up near the top, where you put your wire loop.
Then, for this first grouping, lay an additional two bundles down, not exactly on top of each other but “descending” down the frame. They should all face the same direction — the cut end of the branches should be at the bottom, the leafy tips should be at the top. The leafy tips for these three bundles should face out at slightly different angles from each other.
If you want to be certain the wire has something to hold onto as you get started, knot it onto the base of the wire loop at the top of your wreath.
Then spool the wire out to the bottom of the first bundle, and wrap it around three times, as tightly as humanly possible. Do the same with the second and succeeding bundles. Keep layering new handfuls of bundles on top as you go along and keep tying them in (tightly).
“You want it so tight you an almost hear the wire snap as you wrap it around,” he said.
And at that moment, the wire did indeed snap.
Unfazed, Jenkins just knotted the broken end back onto the wire coming off the spool and kept on going.
Adding cones, berries
If you want to add cones, it’s a good idea to do it ahead of time: Cut about 12 inches of wire and wrap the wire a few times around the base of the pine cone, looping it inside the cone’s bottom few “flaps.” There should be about 8 inches of wire left, hanging loose. Use that to wire the cone into the greens as you go, layering another handful of greens on top of the cones.
The heavier cones should be at the top of the wreath, so they can hang down.
You can similarly lay sprigs of winterberry on top of the greens and wire them in. If you’re tying the wire tightly enough around the greens, the berries will stay safe and snug in between.
When you get to the end of the wreath, wrap your wire tightly around the last bunch of greens about five times. You can then knot it onto the loop that you left at the beginning.
Again, this explanation (while lengthy) only gives a tiny bit of the information that Jenkins provides in the how-to video.
In the below video, watch master wreath maker Wayne Jenkins explain how to make a holiday wreath.
Master wreath maker Wayne Jenkins explains how to make a tightly constructed wreath using greens, pine cones and winterberry that can be found in the area. Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
The key to making a nice tight wreath, explained Wayne Jenkins in a how-to workshop last week, is to keep the frame and greens flat on the table as you wrap them (tightly) with florist wire. Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
You can add in greens such as holly. Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
Jenkins leaves a piece of ribbon at the starting/ending point of his wreaths. Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
