With the weather about to cool way down, I didn’t want to wait to put together some mixed holiday containers. It’s easy to spend a lot on items like packaged spruce tips, curly willow sticks, red twig dogwood and even faux berries and poinsettias, but you can also do a mixed container for very little money. For this mixed container, I started by using a collage technique to decorate the plastic pot with holiday paper.
This takes a day or more to do, so over the weekend, I also gathered the fixings for my holiday containers. I bought a small Fraser fir Christmas tree for $15 (this will be used in another project as well) and cut the bottom 1/3rd of the branches off for the main greenery in my pot. The Fraser fir has kind of two-toned needles, which adds a nice texture to the pot. I also walked around our yard, cutting stray branches from a swamp white oak and a mugo pine. I like the wispy look of red cedar in holiday containers, but don’t have any in our yard. We do, however, have a very mature creeping juniper, so I snipped some wisps from that to use. I had some left over grasses that I had used in a Halloween display as well. The grasses had a large reddish seedhead, so I thought they would add something to the pot, too.
A blend of textures gives the pot a cheery feel.
This morning, assembly began. First, I filled the pot with leftover potting soil from this summer and began building the greenery around the pot. I started with the Fraser fir, then added in the white pine, the mugo, and the juniper for accents. It looked pretty good, fluffy and green, with a fair amount of texture. Then, I added in the red-headed grass (if anyone knows what this is called, please let me know through the comments) and some Joe Pye weed from the garden. I tried several ways of placing it, but no matter what I did, the grass looked, as my husband said as he left for work, “dead and sad.” That’s not what we want this time of year!
With the grass out, I needed something else to brighten the pot. This is the first year I’ve had hydrangeas and I’ve been looking forward to seeing the snow on their broad flowerheads, but it seemed a good idea to sacrifice some of them to the pot. The tannish brown color contrasted nicely with the greenery and the flowers added another texture. The pot still needed some brightening. The pot has a natural look to it, so ornaments and ribbon seemed out of place. Instead, I put skewers into a couple of apples and stuck them in the front of the pot, and cut several branches of berries from a high bush cranberry bush.
The finished product contrasts nicely with the tall red-twig dogwood display and gives a cheery look to our front porch.
Apples added a fresh touch to the container.
[…] the suet and rolling it in seeds. I had already prepared a pot for the tree and planned to use the tree I’d bought earlier for other holiday decorations. I started work on the ornaments Sunday […]