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Containers, Garden

Winter containers: A bit of much-needed gardening fun

December 4, 2012

Gosh, here I was reveling in the extra-week-in-between-Christmas-and-Thanksgiving glow and all of a sudden it’s December and I’m freaking out a little bit. Every year I resolve to take time to actually enjoy the holiday season instead of scurrying around doing everything, and every year, I end up totally stressing myself out.

The problem is that I’m just not the kind of person who can do things far ahead of time. I like Christmas shopping near Christmas, and I hate thinking about winter and Christmas in the middle of summer, so I’ll never be that person who sees the perfect gift in July and actually buys it. The same goes for interior holiday decorating. I can’t live with all those decorations for that long, but then I end up decorating when I feel like I should be “enjoying.”

This is just the kind of person I am, I guess.

My favorite decorations are the ones I do outdoors. It’s my little shot of gardening after a few months off (from the fun stuff at least; cleaning up the garden for winter does not count as fun). I spent most of the weekend working on four containers (three at home, one at work), with frequent stops for various other activities including helping decorate our work entry for the local parade (and handing out candy at said parade later), beach walks, Christmas card photography (third and final attempt), making beef stew and what must have been a lot of other stuff but I can’t really remember.

As I showed you last week, I got my red twig dogwood from the field by my parents’ house and as it turns out, I didn’t cut enough again. Every year I think I have more than I could possibly need and I always seem to come up short. I’ve found that I prefer them bunched together in pots rather than scattered about so I bundled them together with green wire ties. For the larger pots I bound a stake in the middle that I can plunge deep into the pot for stability. I learned this trick from Deborah Silver, queen of the Christmas container.

Bundle dogwood with wire ties to keep it together -- The Impatient Gardener
Larger bundles get a stake in the middle -- The Impatient Gardener

The urn in the middle of the garden (purchased last year to hold the Christmas tree) has a plastic pot that sits in it as a liner so I don’t have to fill the entire urn up with dirt when I plant it. In that pot I just drilled a hole through the center and stuck the stake straight through the pot. Since I had already removed the soil from it, I just fill it up with a small amount of mulch followed by beach sand to hold everything in there. Everything else I just stick straight into the soil left from the summer planting and wait for Old Man Winter to freeze everything up nice and tight (which has yet to happen again this year).

Provide stability to twig bundles by putting a stake through the bottom of the pot -- The Impatient Gardener

After I stick the dogwood in, I fill in with evergreen boughs. Although our property is covered with evergreens, they are mostly some kind of spruce that has a weeping nature to it, which doesn’t make for the perky containers I wanted this year. I went to Home Depot where I found that that some of them will let you take the cuttings from the trees they sell, except someone beat me to it. I did, however, find a fat bottom half of a tree in a corner. The top had been broken off it and although she wouldn’t give it to me for free, she did agree to sell it to me for $7. My husband also got a great deal in a short/half-bald tree at another Home Depot and I cut them both apart to fill the containers.

Half tree cut apart for greens -- The Impatient Gardener

With the bulk of the evergreens in, I filled in with “special” evergreens including a variegated boxwood and seeded Cedar, all of which I bought in bundles at a nursery. The window box also got a few faux berries (that claim to be waterproof, but I’m suspicious) for a little zing, and the big pot by the front door  got some curly white twigs I found in the faux floral department. They are not meant for outdoor use, which is why they are no long curly, and I don’t expect them to last much beyond Christmas, but I thought a cheap shot of white might be nice in that pot.

Variegated boxwood in winter container -- The Impatient Gardener

Dogwood, fir branches and boxwood -- The Impatient Gardener
Here’s the container outside of the office (before I swept up the dirt). It could have used more dogwood branches, but I like the texture of the boxwood in it.
Evergreen boughs, dogwood and faux red berries -- The Impatient Gardener
The faux berries really help brighten up the window box.
Christmas urn -- The Impatient Gardener
Midgarden urn, with more variegated boxwood.

Winter container -- The Impatient Gardener

Winter container-- The Impatient Gardener
The white stems and the seeded Cedar give this container a much-needed touch of brightness.

Throw in a few lights, and I was done. I love them all and hopefully they will last well into March when I’ll be ready to be thinking about spring.

containers dogwood garden holiday winter
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
5 Comments

About Erin @ The Impatient Gardener

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previous post: Buh-bye ugly lamp!
next post: Holy magnolia!

Comments

  1. Katie says: December 4, 2012 at 10:59 pm

    I pinned your window boxes. Sure did! They look like they are straight out of BHAG.

    Reply
  2. Heather @ new house, new home, new life says: December 5, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    Katie (above) is right – those window boxes are awesome!! Also love the seeded cedar and white twigs – very dramatic. Gathered all my stuff, brought it out to start working on the urns here -but then it started raining. So another day without any Christmas decor at our house!

    Reply
  3. Nancy @ The Headmistress says: December 5, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    Beautiful! I've never heard of red dogwood, but I'll surely be looking for it!
    Nancy

    Reply
  4. Hugh says: December 6, 2012 at 7:54 pm

    Amazing. Looks like something out of Home Alone! I can imagine Kevin setting up some traps! However, very Christmassy and I'll be taking some inspiration from it 🙂 Cheers.

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
I fell in love with gardening through container de I fell in love with gardening through container design and it’s probably still my favorite type of gardening. My trip to Philadelphia area gardens was full of so many excellent ideas. For several years I’ve been enamored with clustered pots, but in my opinion they work best when they are able to stand alone in a space. And you probably know me well enough by now to know that as far as I’m concerned, the bigger the pot, the better. Feast your eyes on these beauties and use your zooming fingers to really get into those nooks and crannies. 

Don’t forget to save your favorites because you know you’re going to be looking for them come next spring. 😀

Photos 1 & 2: Amazing container cluster at @longwoodgardens  that works particularly well because of the restraint used in the design. Also how many different ways is the universe going to tell me I need to grow agave before I actually listen?

Photo 3: This was probably favorite display I saw the whole time and of course it’s from the masters at @chanticleergarden This is a master class in texture. It’s also probably not attainable for the average home gardener because it relies heavily on tropicals that need proper overwintering in order to reach a good size. But there’s no reason why I (or you) couldn’t use this as inspiration to create a similar feel with other plants. 

Photo 4: Strappy foliage, bright orange and colorful pots create such a good doorway collection at @chanticleergarden 

Photo 5, 6 & 7: Similar colors were used at a patio doorway at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm home garden. A pot is perfectly framed by an arbor off a side patio. The front entrance has a pink theme (and an amazing feature pot that I couldn’t show here because all my shots are vertical). 

Photo 8: Back to @chanticleergarden where I could have studied this container planting for an hour just to soak up all the detail. 

Photo 9: And while I love a pot with a lot going on, never underestimate the power of a simply planted, gorgeous pot, like this one at @abunting64 garden Belvidere. 

#gbfling2023
I think every garden probably needs a little bit o I think every garden probably needs a little bit of water, even if it’s just a bird bath. All of the fabulous gardens I saw recently in the Philadelphia area incorporated water into them. Here are just a few examples of how lovely these water features were. 

@paxsonhillfarm @northviewgarden @brandywinecottage @longwoodgardens #gbfling2023
Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the vi Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the view even though we all know that most of us rarely take the opportunity to use them. The seating I saw in gardens in the Philadelphia area reflected their gardens and all were special. 

Make sure to share your favorite!

Photo 1:  I adored these perfectly lichen-covered chairs at @brandywinecottage

Photo 2: Great lichen game on this bench at Wayne Guymon’s mind-blowing garden WynEden. 

Photo 3: Perhaps my favorite seating moment of the whole trip was this chair in @jennyrosecarey @northviewgarden . Not only was it perfectly lichen covered (are you sensing a theme here?) but a volunteer cleome was growing right up through the middle of it. Unfortunately this photo of it isn’t grata because by this point in the trip my phone (I didn’t want to use my DSLR in the middle of the tropical storm so I switched to my phone) was getting very grumpy about the rain. 

Photo 4: I’d be happy to hang out on these chairs in @abunting64 ‘s gorgeous garden Belvidere. I loved this space. 

Photo 5: Color was the name of the game on this patio at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. 

Photo 6: The most original table and benches I saw were at @abunting64 garden. This was a portion of the garden that was actually on the neighbors’ property adjacent to Andrew’s. It had been a vegetable garden but is getting a bit too shady so it will soon have a new life. 

Photo 7: We visited Barbara Tiffany’s Mill Fleurs in a deluge, which is a shame, and dotted throughout the property are examples of her husband Tiff’s amazing furniture. This was, called the Centipede was upholstered and quite different from the others. All were amazing works of art. 

Photos 8 and 9: The @scott_arboretum at @swarthmorecollege had some excellent seating, from brand new @deebenarc chairs to more lichen-covered charmers.

#gbfling2023
*** I can already see that some people do not unde *** I can already see that some people do not understand humor so let me just say this: 1. I was fully aware of the escaped convict situation (I’m an avid follower of the news, which is common for us journalists). 2. It’s ok to laugh about the fact that I’ve missed the Longwood meadow twice through weird circumstances while being a rational adult and realizing that I’m not making light of the situation that led to the meadow being mown. ***

I missed seeing @longwoodgardens beautiful meadow the first time I visited so I was excited to see it the second time. Not so fast! Turns out it had to be mown down during the search for an escaped convict who was hiding out there (at least that’s what I was told was the reason for the mowing). He’ll never see goldenrod the same way again! 😀

That whole situation was really unfortunate for @longwoodgardens (not to mention everyone who lives in the area), which had to be closed for about a week while the hunt was on!
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