At the Institute of Winter Wonders, we value experiments that fit on one table and bring the whole family around it. In just one hour, this workshop will take you from a pile of oranges, spices, and evergreens to a finished wreath on your door — and switch on a small olfactory reactor of New Year’s mood at home.

What you need. A universal kit for any wreath:

Then the fun part begins: choosing the “filling” for your personal New Year experiment.

Final touches. At the decorating stage, we recommend letting your thoughts wander creatively and adding anything that feels right. Here are a few ideas:

• tiny cones of coniferous trees — modified shoots that serve as reproductive structures in pines, spruces, and other gymnosperms;
• cinnamon sticks — dried pieces of bark from trees of genus Cinnamomum (Lauraceae family — most often Ceylon cinnamon Cinnamomum verum or Chinese cassia Cinnamomum cassia);
• ​lemon slices and small spruce or fir twigs that add another layer of citrus freshness and northern evergreen forest to the composition.

​In about an hour, in a cozy home atmosphere, you will create not just a decoration for your door or wall, but kick-start a small olfactory experiment with the essential oils of winter. And as in any good New Year’s experiment, the most important result is the time spent together — around one table, with jokes, stories behind each element, and shared dreams for the year ahead.

Dried orange slice wreath

“Spicy Star” wreath

In the second version, the main character is true star anise (Illicium verum), an evergreen tropical tree whose dried fruits look like small brown stars. Each “star” is a multi‑rayed compound fruit with a spicy scent; up to 80–85% of its essential oil is anethole, the compound responsible for the familiar anise note.

How to turn oranges, spices, and evergreens into a holiday experiment for the whole family

A Skoltech employee, biologist, science communicator, wildlife photographer, and laureate of the "For Fidelity to Science" award

A flat plywood ring (6 mm thick) or a metal macramé ring. In this workshop, the wreaths are 14 and 17 cm in diameter.

Decorative velvet ribbon (1.5 cm wide, 1 m long) to make a loop.

A hot glue gun — the main assistant in assembling everything neatly.

Base

Hanger

Tool

For the first version, you will need about 500 g of dried sweet orange slices (Citrus × sinensis) from the Rutaceae family. In supermarkets and online, they may be sold as fruit chips. The golden slices become a bright visual accent, while the essential oils in the peel give the wreath a rich citrus aroma.