Spin-off: Anyone done their own fresh garland?

Not garland but my family does fresh wreaths from boughs we get on our woodlot.  Some years they last longer than others and they are outside (so that is a big difference) but they always last at least the Christmas season.  In my opinion it is more about sticky pitch and/or finding a good fur/evergreen or viney type variety that looks good.

I am not sure if you are against chemicals or whether this is safe for inside(you would have to read the product description and safety notes) but sometime we spray a product called Wilt Pruf (although I am sure there are others that do the same thing) that helps hold the moisture in.  

You always do a beautiful job on home decor things, I am sure whatever you decide on will be gorgeous .  Good luck.

ETA - we have added elements to fake garland we had that wasn’t high end to kind of dress it up, specifically pinecone clusters.  We used pinecones we collected and used some kind of spray (?) thin shellac/polyurethane type product.  They look good, it really made a difference

Do they need the spray? We collected some from Lake Tahoe on our honeymoon at the beginning of January 1995. We decorate with them almost every Christmas and they’re still in excellent condition. 

Probably not, but not really sure.  We were trying to get them to hold up.  I have had one garland probably 15 years or and it still looks good and the pine ones are still intact.

I've never made a garland out of our pines and firs, but I have cut off branches to use as accents in a fresh garland that I've purchased. They do dry out like any fresh garland will, but adding the diversity of different types of evergreens looks really good.

I have made garland before by hand and it was kind of a pain. The garland you buy has had a tool used to make the wire wrapping MUCH faster and easier. (I actually work part time at a tree farm making wreaths. I didn’t make garland but we did make it at the farm.) One thing to make the garland look nice is that it will take far more greenery than you think to make a nice, full garland. At the tree farm only the best bits of boughs go into the bunches that are wired onto garland. The rest go into plastic cans to be cut up for wreaths. Proportion is important is well. If you want a droopy garland you need longer sections of boughs, for narrower garland you can use shorter lengths. For wreaths we size the cuts for the shift on the size of rings we are using. 42 inch wreaths have 2x the length on the branches than a 20-30 inch.

And if it doesn’t seem like the wreaths and garland last very long, it is because they may have already been made for weeks already. I started working for the season a week before Halloween. The scent can differ a lot depending on the type of greenery too. Firs in general do not smell as much as balsam, for example. (Love shifts when we have balsam to cut!)

For smallest uses maybe 6 inches. For most purposes I’d say 8-10 inches or so, depending on the branch. Really fluffy you could go 12-15. Your need to make sure to leave yourself some stem that you came wrap the wire around.

I don’t think you need to soak them at all if they are cut fresh. But if you are not using them right away, keeping them in a cool place and covering them with a sheet will help keep them from drying out. (At the tree farm there are big fabric tarps over the piles of boughs, excess clipped greenery cut but not yet used, and completed items are all covered.