Making home-made Christmas decorations is no longer the intricate, fiddly, time-consuming task I’d once imagined, requiring a degree in arts and crafts to achieve.

Horticulturalists Gill and Cliff Plowes, who run a nursery in Selby, and will be demonstrating how to make festive decorations at the forthcoming RHS Christmas Show in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, have given me a huge amount of inspiration.

Holly spheres, according to Gill, are among the easiest and most effective decorations, can be done in minutes once you have all your materials and look stunning hung outside on hanging basket hooks or on hooks on the top of door frames in your greenhouse.

To make a holly sphere, you’ll need a dry oasis ball (around the size of a tennis ball), a yard of curling ribbon (which is strong) or raffia, and some wire, all available from good florists.

Of course, you will also need holly from the garden, but if you don’t have any, ask a neighbour if you might snip off some sprigs and perhaps you’ll find time to make another for the neighbour, too.

First, pierce the ribbon with a piece of florist’s wire so you can thread the wire and ribbon right through the centre of the oasis ball, knotting the ribbon or making it into a loop at the bottom and securing it further by threading more wire through the loop and into the oasis, to secure the decoration when it is suspended.

It doesn’t really matter if it looks a bit untidy at the bottom, because the foliage will cover it when the sphere is finished.

At the top of the ball, wind the ribbon up to stop it becoming too creased and secure with a paperclip, which you can hold with one hand while inserting foliage with the other.

When you are picking your holly, use end pieces, allowing for two to three pairs of leaves, and then trim off the bottom pair of leaves so you have an inch of clear stem.

“Starting at the top of the sphere, put in pieces of holly around 2½-3in long, adding small bits of conifer as you go, working around the ball until it is all covered,” says Gill.

By eye, make sure the foliage is even and fill in any gaps with other evergreens.

“Thuja ‘Rheingold’ is a great ornamental golden conifer to stick between the holly sprigs. The colour contrast really highlights it. You can also use ivy with clusters of berries, leaving the last two leaves of the ivy and the berries, which will fill it out and give the sphere a different dimension.”

This will look great on its own, although other bits and pieces can also be added including seedheads and cones, which may be better glued on. You can tie a bow at the top of the sphere with the remaining ribbon and then suspend it from your hanging basket bracket.