Remember the holidays when you smelled the fragrances of live and fresh-cut evergreens, and the sweet smell of paperwhites (Narcissus papyraceus) in full bloom?
The scents trigger fond memories of holidays past.
Today, there are many more plant materials to weave into holiday décor creatively. Plants are an integral component for holiday decorating, both indoors and out.
Two talented professional container garden designers know how to add holiday sparkle to winter containers—Christina Salwitz, owner of Personal Garden Coach in Renton, Washington, and Geoffrey Meade from Farmington Gardens in Beaverton, Oregon. These two share tips for creating lush plantings for winter and holiday containers.
Think texture and color
Perennials and shrubs planted in winter pots are Meade’s favorite thing. “I’m conservative, as I really like the contrast and the textural colors in the wintertime,” he said.
You can use almost any evergreen material, indoors or out. Of course, outdoors, you will need hardy plants. With so much hardy plant material available, barren containers in the winter are a thing of the past. If designed for a long-term display, festive holiday containers become winter wonderlands for the rest of the season.
Meade said, “You can have beautiful winter baskets filled with plant material that go into the garden when you’re done.” In today’s economic climate, any money spent on a hardy plant that lasts for years after the holidays is well spent.
Plant recommendations
Meade believes an excellent plant for the holidays would be the Camellia ‘ Yuletide’, a shrub whose flowers look like ornaments. “They named it ‘Yuletide’ for a reason,” he said. “I would buy a 3-gallon size and place it in a decorative pot by itself. That’s all Christmassy right there, with its red, single flowers with yellow centers. You could also underplant the shrub with some hardy all white pansies.”
Both designers suggested using Heuchera plants for foliage color and hellebores for winter flowers and strong leaf presence. Salwitz recommends Helleborus ‘Jonah’ or ‘Jacob’ cultivars for their winter white blossoms in December.
Add festive touches
Once planted, a winter container is easily made festive for the December holidays by adding floral picks, ornaments, bows, and perhaps a sparkling touch of fairy lights.
Meade recommends visiting your local nursery that sells holiday decorations, such as floral picks. Tuck them in with your plants. For the outside, choose items that will withstand weather conditions.
When topping the pots with showy décor and greens, Salwitz advises using only shatterproof items. “Any décor or greens need to be secured firmly with wire in case of wind. Sometimes we hide large rocks in the tops of pots to help hold everything down.”
When the holiday décor comes down, Meade says, “You know how dreary it gets in the winter? Just a couple of baskets with a little color outside your kitchen window is something fun to look at.”
Add plant foliage
Not only does decorating with plant foliage look fabulous, but it also brings nature indoors and out, warming the holidays and beyond with living things.
Lemon cypress (Hesperocyparis macrocarpa ‘Goldcrest’), red foliage Heuchera plants and collector conifers — like a dwarf Cryptomeria or cypress (Cupressus) — are Salwitz’s favorite plants for combination plantings. However, the plant combinations she uses change year to year, and pot to pot, with stunning results.
Containers and holiday décor tucked with Douglas fir can come from windfalls. Salwitz loves a good windstorm, especially when it brings down magnolia branches. Magnolia foliage provides a splendid textural contrast when combined with fine-needle conifer boughs. “One year, a magnolia tree fell over, giving an enormous harvest of branches for the holidays,” Salwitz said.
Plan ahead for spring
Both Meade and Salwitz add that when planting your winter pots, it is time to put in bulbs for spring flowers.
“This is the time to hide those bulbs in your pots,” Salwitz said. “Consider your plant choices that will transition easily to a cheerful early spring look, when the bulbs bloom.”
Meade agreed. “A nice thing to put in baskets, if you want a surprise in the spring is something Danielle Ferguson [former owner of Ferguson’s Fragrant Nursery in St. Paul, Oregon] taught me,” Meade said. “Plant fall bulbs in them, so come spring, all of a sudden you have some daffodils or tulips flowering — a nice little surprise.”
Shops and nurseries stock a myriad of indoor exotic flowers, foliage and greens, besides your standard paper whites and Amaryllis. For outside, there are many hardy flowering plants, foliage and greens available to dress up containers.
The hardest part may be choosing which plants you want to use this year. Salwitz determines her plant’s placement after the holidays, before selecting. Will the plants stay in the pot, or will they be moved into the landscape or another pot?
“Once we know that, then I know the scale of the plants I want for that pot,” Salwitz said. “If it will stay in the pot for two or three years potentially, I try to start with smaller-scale plants. If they’re going out of the container the following spring, we can go bigger and bolder. The décor choices follow after that.”
Then combine with fairy lights, twiggy windfalls, lanterns, sparkling ornaments, and top with a large holiday bow. Soon after decking your containers with magnolia and conifer foliage, singing many fa la la la las, and before drinking a few too many eggnogs, you’ve planted a holiday festival.