These sweet-smelling orange and clove garlands are bright, fun and good for the environment! When you’re finished with them they can go straight on the compost. Here’s to a zero-waste Christmas.

D.I.Y Christmas is my favourite! Last year I made tea, hot chocolate, and bath salts as gifts. This year I wanted to focus a little on the decoration side of things. We have a crappy plastic Christmas tree and will use it until it breaks, so dreams of a live, delicious pine scented tree are in the distant future for now but at least I can make the little things out of anything other than plastic!

To make these I used three oranges. Each orange made about 6 slices which stretches out pretty far when you put them side by side. The oranges don’t shrink too much when dried, they become thinner but their circumference stays about the same.

They can be dried in a dehydrator or an oven and how long this takes depends on how thickly you cut them. Anywhere from 10-20 hours at 65-70 degrees Celsius. They will make your house smell delicious while they dry! And all the end bits that are too small for a garland go GREAT in a summer cocktail.

Check that they are completely crispy and dry before using them. No one likes a mouldy Christmas decoration!

A properly dried orange slice can last for years.

Once dried I plugged them with whole cloves. They add a beautiful Christmassy smell and break up the orange colour with little pops of black.

I used a bamboo skewer to thread cooking twine through the oranges. What string/twine you use is up to you but I make sure to use a compostable one so I can throw the whole garland on the compost heap when I am done with it.

Then I pressed some rosemary sprigs into the orange slices for some greenery. They will dry out and lose their green over a few weeks so the rosemary I’ll replace every so often. I had little pine cones that I collected last year lying around so I added some of those in too but you could add any interesting leaves, twigs, or greenery you like.

Merry Christmas!

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