After such a long and dreary year, we could all use a celebration. Add some cheer to your front yard this holiday season with an adorable holiday garden gnome built from a tomato cage. Watch executive editor Danielle Sherry as she constructs this happy lawn decoration in a matter of minutes.
 

Items needed for your DIY holiday gnome

• Tomato cage
• 25  branches from an evergreen tree (12-inch to 20-inch lengths work well)
• Hat (or festive sweater) and mittens
• Potato
• Florists wire
• Florists pins (2-inch)
• Florists foam block

Steps to building your gnome

The items you’ll need can easily be scraped together from what you have on hand or with a quick visit to your local consignment shop. We used a sweater for the hat, but you could, of course, use an actual hat. We found that adding a foam block to make the hat stand up was necessary to give it some shape, but other solutions are possible as well.

1. Place your tomato cage upside down on the spot where you want your gnome to live.
2. Tie the legs of your tomato cage together with florists wire.
3. Attach the individual pieces of your evergreen branches along the tomato cage. Start at the bottom and work your way up to give the gnome a layered look. Cover the entire tomato cage with the branches.
4. Add a potato nose to the top third of your gnome. We used florists pins to attach wire to the potato and then twist-tied the wire into the branches and tomato cage to secure the potato.
5. Attire your gnome. We stuffed a foam block into the arm of a red sweater and pulled the sweater down over the top of the gnome to form a hat. We secured it by poking florists wire into the sweater and twist-tying it to the gnome underneath. This also helped to tighten the sweater across the top of the gnome to make it look more like a hat.
6. Using the florists wire, attach the mittens to the front of the gnome on either side, approximating where his hands might be. We did have to fiddle with this a bit to ensure they were level.

If you don’t have any of the above on hand, you can replace any material with a little ingenuity. Use your own creativity to craft your holiday gnome, and don’t forget to share in the comments below or tag us on social media @FineGardening on Instagram and Facebook.

See more holiday garden crafts

Allium Winter Solstice Wreath

How to Craft a Holiday Wreath from the Garden

Holiday Boxwood Tree