Creating a Wildlife Christmas Tree

Whilst many of us are busy shopping and frantically trying to fit in festive activities, it is easy to forget the wildlife living alongside us who live through the natural seasonal changes and face particular challenges like a scarcity of food or shelter. In my spare time I’m involved in a community group called Kettering Nature Group which is a non profit Constituted Community Group working to improve the prospects for Biodiversity in and around Kettering by encouraging people to take a closer look at nature, and record their sightings. It was set up by my husband and he works extremely hard to provide a series of projects which helps the community connect with nature. Projects have included bat walks, a bee barn project, swift box installations and a Festival of Nature which was hosted by Wicksteed Park in May. This weekend we entered The Christmas Tree Festival held at St Andrews Church which is a beautiful event which invites community groups to decorate a Christmas tree to celebrate and display what their group does.

We thought making a Wildlife Christmas Tree would be perfect and as an extra gift I made a mini zine about recreating your own in your garden, which we left under the tree for visitors to take. We made various wildlife friendly decorations made of fruit, nuts, seeds, popcorn,etc which would be safe for the birds and squirrels to nibble on. As our tree is for display only and indoors currently we added extras like the lights, animal portraits and wooden silhouettes. We really enjoyed making the decorations and hope visitors are inspired to have a go at creating their own. It’s also a nice way to repurpose your tree outside after Christmas as the birds will appreciate the shelter.

I really wanted to share the idea further than local so you can download your own zine which is printed on one side of paper and folded into a mini booklet as shown in the video. To get your download fill out the form below the video or if you are already a newsletter subscriber; you can find it with the other free resources. Just a heads up - when printing your page, make sure to select ‘borderless printing’ so it prints to the edge of the paper. If you haven’t got that option it will print a small white border all around the edge. If this happens, simply trim if off before folding. Have fun!