Plant up our festive ideas this Christmas

But there’s no need to spend cash that’s been earmarked for bottles of wine, nibbles and finger food; no, simply

rearrange and redecorate your existing plants to turn them into temporary “party pieces”.

Make guests feel welcome from the moment they walk up your drive with a superb doorstep display.

A pair of matching flame-shaped yew trees, box balls or trained bay trees in pots only needs some coloured ribbons, bows or fake berries – even a few coloured glass baubles – to turn them into Christmas party pieces.

If you don’t have suitable doorstep plants, simply borrow a large tub planted with a mixture of small variegated evergreens, berrying shrubs and winter heathers from the patio, jazz it up in the same way and hang an evergreen wreath on the front door.

If you want to make even more of a spectacle, hang lanterns on the brackets you normally use in summer for

hanging baskets, or use a few helium-filled balloons.

There’s one thing about making a big splash “out the front”, friends will have no trouble finding you.

Keep the festive  feeling up by continuing the theme in the hallway as guests come inside. A large stairwell is the perfect place for a tall Christmas tree, backed up with evergreen garlands strung round the banisters.

If space is short, collect up your best foliage pot plants from around the house and rearrange them on the hallstand or telephone table with perhaps just one superb flowering cyclamen, poinsettia or orchid to transform the whole lot

into a Victorian country-house style display.

If there’s only room in a corner for a large jar, fill it with evergreen foliage, twigs or branches cut from the garden and give them a burst of glitter or gold and silver spray and a few ribbons or glitzy seasonal baubles.

When it comes to living and dining rooms or the conservatory, a lot of fussy little plants will be totally lost in a “busy” room packed with people so shift them somewhere else for the duration.

However, if you have some large evergreen pot plants, “resting” orange or lemon trees or handsome conservatory shrubs, go to town decorating them – why not try using artificial birds, fresh lychee fruits, dried flower-heads, cinnamon sticks, foil-wrapped chocolates or little cocktail umbrellas suspended on mending thread or florist’s wire

instead of the usual baubles.

And if you have trellis against your internal conservatory wall, thread fairy lights through the latticework to create an

instant grotto.

When you have a lovely indoor plant display that’s only lacking scent, cheat. Use a small bottle of aromatherapy oil (rose, gardenia or jasmine are good), soak the tips of several cotton buds in fragrant oil then push the other ends into the pot somewhere they’ll be out of sight. Guests will pick up on the scent and be amazed at your gardening skills

that have coaxed such powerful aromas from normally unscented plants.

OK, it’s all an illusion, but first impressions count so let your plants help create the perfect party atmosphere, even

when you are watching the pennies.