Here’s how to give your front door an Aussie Christmas feel

Armed with florist scissors and surrounded by foliage, Jules Loong starts with spruce. She cuts and curves stems of the conifer until she has a ring of needles. Then she builds up layers: in go three pine cones; a dash of spinning gum; a hefty dose of berzillea.

By the end there are no clean edges, no loud colours and no gaps. This wreath looks as lush as a forest. All it needs is a front door.

There’s nothing new about dressing houses for Christmas but wreaths seem to be on a new roll. In some streets there’s barely a bare door in sight. I put it down to COVID. Even in the thick of the pandemic, when other people’s houses were strictly off-limits, a carefully positioned wreath could spread Christmas cheer all the way to the footpath.

Kate Hill Flowers, where Loong works, will sell hundreds of wreaths between now and Christmas. Other florists are the same. This year, the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Friends group is running not one but two wreath-making workshops.

Hanging wreaths for Christmas is thought to have begun in the 16th century, around the same time as Europeans started cutting conifers to bring inside as Christmas trees. All the branches these revellers removed to squeeze an evergreen through the front door were turned into decorations in their own right.

While these decorations started out as simple rings – symbolising eternity – things have gradually gotten more elaborate. Kate Hill Flowers has been known to make wreaths with everything from red baubles, cinnamon sticks and twigs to billy buttons, moss and the stems of cotton plants.

But the owner, florist Kate Hill, says the outfit’s most popular wreath mixes a sprinkling of gums leaves with exotic (but locally grown) foliage, green berries and flowers to create a full, fragrant, and predominantly green display that is “elegant and contemporary”.

Other wreath makers are, however, going heavier on Australian plants. Bush in Carlton North, does away with exotics entirely. Owner, Michael Pavlou, a florist who also owns a banksia farm in northern Victoria, is tapping into a crowd that “wants something authentic to our environment … rather than holly and berries.”