Why spend hundreds of dollars “decking the halls” with expensive boughs of holly in a bid to prove your festive flare?
Instead, sprucing up your garden into a creative Christmas wonderland can be done without breaking the bank and is arguably the best way to prove you’re not the neighbourhood Grinch.
Transforming your front yard into a holiday head turner will lighten up the Christmas spirit on any street while ensuring the home’s walls, doors, and decor remain free from any internal decoration mishaps.
It’s also budget-friendly – provided you’re up for some DIY, so here are our Build-it tips to create that festive garden scene.
Consider your scale
A plan is essential before we begin sprinkling some elf magic over our front yards.
Consider the space you have to work with, including the different levels and layers of the property.
The roof, fences, lawn space, decking, doors, and window frames are all key areas to consider if you wish for your front garden to sleigh the Christmas spirit.
We recommend decorating from the top down to reduce the likelihood of trips and falls while adding extra wires and items to the space for ease of access and improved safety.
Choose a theme
Before purchasing any additional products to ‘fir’ up your front garden, decide on a rough theme.
It’s important to consider what Christmas decorations you have collected over the years and how they could help transform your garden into a tinsel town.
Ensure any new purchases don’t drift wildly from this theme. For example, if you have predominantly white lights and decorations, it may be best to stay away from bright rainbow colours and stick to a more icy theme.
Lighting
Making your front lawn merry and bright is easier than ever with Santa’s sack of cost-cutting lights available at most home renovation stores.
Space-filling, eye-catching and fun, Christmas lighting has long been one of the most popular aspects of decorating a home for the holidays.
Fairy and rope lighting can add festive cheer to even the most grinchy of grottos.
For those wanting a bit more bang for their buck, smart lights have become the go-to choice for most modern homeowners, allowing users to turn on, change colour, and set timers – all from the ease of their smartphone or tablet.
Connector lights are also popular for those with limited outdoor power point access, allowing users to connect strings of lights using a single transformer and, therefore, a single power supply.
Solar lights are another smart choice, and while they may not make for the brightest display, they can add the perfect quaint effect to bush lines and fences while relieving the need to turn them on and off.
Outdoor DIY dec’s
Christmas tree forests
Fill the yard with a forest of miniature Christmas trees with these perfect hacks to lighten the lawn, garden path, or patio deck.
Also known as “Christmas teepees”, this simple hack needs some cone-shaped wire garden obelisks and short-lengthed solar lights.
Garden obelisks are typically used as climbing frames for plants but make the perfect tree-like structure to wrap lights around.
The cost-effective decoration works great in bunches creating a wintery forest effect, with various-sized framing available and one string of lights often able to service several “Christmas teepees”.
Candy cane lane
Pool noodles provide one of the best opportunities to brighten the garden path with a fun and colourful vibe the kids will love.
Wrapping a pool noodle with white masking tape gives it a fabulous candy cane effect.
Overlapping this with white Christmas lights will make that candy pop.
Then, bend the tip and tie it to the candy cane stem using some fishing line or transparent wiring to create the shape.
Use some thin metal piping spiked into the garden to provide the perfect stem anchor that will slide seamlessly through the centre of the pool noodles and keep them upright.
Oversized wall wreaths
Candy canes aren’t the only festive fun you can have with a set of pool noodles.
Taping three together in a giant circle will make you the perfect base for a large wall wreath to fill those big spaces on the home or garden fence.
Covering your foam loop with natural fibre webbing or dark green tinsel will create a beautiful branch-like circular loop.
This can then be fully or partially decorated with natural garden clippings, bush breakaways, solar lights, and bright red bauble decorations.
