Simple Christmas gifts from the garden

In my last post, I pointed to the current record level of Australian credit card debt and recent projections for Christmas 2012. As members of SCSA we know this level of debt and consumption is unsustainable, yet old habits are hard to break. The next few posts contain some simple ideas to help make this Christmas more sustainable.

If you have room for potted plants, a garden, or know someone who does,  you have access to a ready made source of gifts all year round. Flower bulbs in our garden needed to be thinned, so I dug them up, replanted a few and dried the remainder to give away. These will turn into beautiful, golden daffodils next spring. They will also attract bees, butterflies and many other beneficial insects to someone else’s garden.

We make  delicious and therapeutic  herbal teas from fresh or dried, garden herbs. I filled  a few recycled glass jars with surplus  dried Lemon Balm leaves, Calendula petals, Mint and Lemon Verbena.. If you have never dried herbs before, here is a good site – Preserving and Drying Herbs.

The gift tags were made from cardboard biscuit boxes and a second hand magazine. The pictures were glued to the cardboard , cut into various shapes and finished off with a hole puncher and left over strands of wool. Old Christmas cards can also be recycled in this way.

Check out Veronique’s blog here!