Tomato Cages in December

What do you do with tomato cages in December?  Make a holiday topiary of course!

I don't know who the first person was to think up turning tomato cages into topiaries, but they deserve the Nobel craft prize.  Every year I eye those gorgeous holiday topiaries...and every year I can't bring myself to spend $80 on two trees.  But this year tomato cage topiaries have been popping up all over Pinterest and the blogosphere...and I had to get in on that!


What could be simpler?  A tomato cage...some garland...a strand of lights and a bow to top it off.  In my typical fashion, I didn't actually read any tutorials, I just jumped right in.  And now I have a million little scratches on my hands.  I HIGHLY recommend wearing gloves.  Learn from my impulsiveness :)


These took me a few hours to make - mostly because of how long it took to wire all of the lights in place.  If you go with a draped light approach, you could have these done in a half hour.


I used 33 inch tomato cages and 4 strands of cheap, 9 foot garland from Walmart.  You need the wired garland to wrap around the tomato cage frame as you go.

I just wrapped the garland round and round, starting from the top

To make sure the garland stays in place, I twisted a wired branch around each of the vertical legs on every layer.  When I got to each of the horizontal support frames, I twisted a few of the wired branches around the frame all the way around.

Once the cage was all wrapped in garland, it was time to add some lights

I wired the lights on from the inside.  This was absolutely the most time consuming part.  I stuck the entire strand of lights inside the cage and tried to space the strand evenly along the inside before I started.

To make symmetry a little easier, I had the light strand plugged in while I worked.

To wire each bulb in place, just poke it through from the inside and wrap a wired branch around the base of the bulb.  Repeat 100 times...

I topped my topiaries off with a red velvet bow with streamers.

(please disregard all the madness in the background - Christmas crafting is a time of clutter and chaos)

And here they are in place :)

Grand total for each topiary...$17 :)

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