Planning for winter container arrangements
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Earlier this month a full house welcomed Toronto Botanical Gardens Director of Horticulture Paul Zammit to the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society’s November general meeting. Paul came to talk generally about Drama in the Winter Garden and specifically about Winter Container Gardening. And wow, did we get pumped to start dusting off urns, gathering greens and pulling on the gardening gloves because of course working with greenery can leave sticky sap on your hands.
Paul says that before you start to arrange your container take a good look at where it will sit. “Keep in mind how you are going to view it. Will it be from inside as well as out or will a one-sided arrangement work?”
Greens should be as fresh as possible, Paul says.
“Pick them up and feel them. They should have some weight and be flexible. If you’re not quite ready to work on the arrangement store your greens outside on the north side of the house out of the wind.
“Use five or six different kinds of greens.”
Paul says to consider the shape, colour and form. Choose from deliciously fragrant white pine and silver fir which is green on one side and silver on the other. Cone cedar will cascade down the side of your arrangement, and boxwood is a good finishing green to fill empty spaces.
Dogwood comes into its glory in the fall and winter. Flame dogwood has an orange, terra-cotta colour. Yellow twig dogwood is of course, yellow and don’t forget the traditional red coloured dogwood too.
For additional textures you can choose pussy willows even though they are closed this time of year. Juniper berries are nice and Southern magnolia leaves with their rust coloured foliage add patina to containers. “They are also the most expensive green,” Paul says.
Paul reminds us to look for frost-resistant labels on containers and be sure that they have drainage holes. Use a fibre pot as an insert for your container to hold the greenery. Balled up newsprint will help to stabilize the fibre pot in the larger container. Fill the fibre pot with composted manure or something that is fairly dense.
“The plus about composted manure,” Paul says, “is that it’s heavier and in the spring it goes right into the composter.”
Winter container arranging can be a messy job, Paul continued.
“Work quickly and start close to the centre of the arrangement, working your way out. Strip off lower needles. Put branches in close together and push them deep into the arrangement. Give them a tug test to make sure they are in. Make the arrangement really full and really dense.”
You can either cluster things or mix things. Using dogwood early on to frame the shape of your finished arrangement may be helpful.
To make ornaments from nature try pulling leaves off seeded eucalyptus, clustering the seed pieces, and wiring them together. Shove three pinecones together, wrap floral wire around the outside, spin the cones to tighten the wire and add a bamboo stick to poke them into your arrangement.
Using leftover small pieces (scraps) of greenery for a skirt at the base of a pedestal container.
Paul suggests it’s important to connect all of the different arrangements that you make for your home at Christmas (including containers, wreaths, window boxes and such) by using common elements in each.
If you continue to water your arrangements as they begin to freeze your winter container arrangements should last until the end of February or early March.
As for year round evergreens in your garden Paul says “these are the soldiers, our workhorses. Mother nature will decorate them for us.”
The next meeting of the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society is our Members Only (and always delicious) Christmas Pot Luck on Tuesday, December 3 in the Lions Auditorium at the Tillsonburg Community Centre. It starts at 6:00 p.m.
For additional information about the society visit our website at www.tillsonburghorticultural.ca.