Maybe you have a doorstep planter that you love to fill with beautiful color and botanical textures throughout the year – but what about winter when your holiday evergreens have faded and it’s still too early for colorful pansies? After all, there’s nothing we can plant this time of year, right? To get around that challenge, our Container Design team takes a different route to keep your doorstep looking fresh and inviting during the coldest months of the year.
Winter Elements
Instead of living plants, our Container Design team uses botanical elements like white birch poles, winding lengths of dried grapevine, pinecones, and botanical spheres made of wood or moss. Together, these elements create unique, free-form designs, inspired by nature and full of movement, texture, and subtle color.
Start with a Fiber Pot
The easiest way to create your own container design is to start with a fiber slip-pot. Our fiber pots come in a range of sizes to slip right into any decorative outdoor container – so you don’t have to fill the entire volume with soil. And with a fiber pot, you can do your design work inside where it’s warm, then take your completed project outside and drop it into place when you’re done. If there’s a fiber pot already in your outdoor container, bring it inside so the soil can thaw. Then remove any plant material or evergreen boughs from the previous season before you begin your new arrangement.
Next, Birch Poles
Birch poles provide height and a nice focal point to your design. And they give the other elements something to attach to. To keep the poles upright in the fiber pot, you can try the method that container designer Angie Phillipp uses. She stands the birch poles up inside a plastic grow pot and fills in around the poles with landscape river rock to give the poles some stability. Then, with the birch poles and grow pot in the center of the fiber pot, she fills both containers with damp soil. Or another option is to simply “plant” the birch poles directly in the damp soil up to about one-third of their height. Then, you’ll just want to pack the soil tightly around their bases. Freezing temperatures will lock the soil around the poles once they’re outside too.
Winding Grapevine
At our Garden Store, we have bundles of dried grapevine packaged into tight, circular wreaths. As you unwind one, its organic, twisting shape brings all kinds of interesting texture and movement to the design. First, Angie tucks one end of the grapevine between the poles – and if needed, she uses floral wire to anchor it to the poles too. Then, she begins to unwind and spread out the dry grapevine, letting it bend and twist where it wants as she guides it in sweeping arcs around the birch poles. As she works, she uses more wire to secure the vine in a few places on the poles. According to Angie, there’s no perfect method for this step. The final look depends on how the vine wants to unwind – with your guidance, of course – so no two arrangements will look exactly alike.
Finishing Touches
Once the grapevine is in place, it’s time for the details. In our collection, we have pinecones, driftwood spheres, and moss-covered balls to add natural ornaments to your design – we recommend adding these elements in groups of three. And just like with the grapevine, floral wire keeps everything secure and wind-proof. As a final touch, you can cover the soil with sheets of preserved moss or sphagnum moss too.
Looking Ahead to Spring
These organically beautiful arrangements are the perfect way to dress up your outdoor containers while we wait for spring. And when pansies do arrive, their cheerful, colorful faces will look spectacular planted under this sculptural centerpiece already in place. Stop in to see us and find everything you need to design your own one-of-a-kind creation – we’re happy to help you keep those beautiful pots looking fresh as we wait for spring.
