Designing a Winter Planter with Style
CONTAINED
BRILLIANCE
Get Creative and Stylize Your Winter Container Planting this Holiday Season
I recently partook in a “Winter Style-It Container Challenge” sponsored by Monrovia and Digging In Gathering. The structure of the competition was to have a small group of container gardeners from various regions across the country design a winter planter using Monrovia’s Goshiki Osmanthus. I was lucky enough to be one of them.
You may be familiar with Monrovia as they are one of the largest brands of potted plants sold throughout the US; dedicated to quality working with breeders from around the world to test and trial plants before bringing them to the trade and homeowners. The lesser known, but equally as dynamic Digging In Gathering, is a community of professional container gardeners from across the nation that meets monthly via zoom and at a minimum once year in person to “dig in'' and discuss the nuts and bolts of what it is to be a professional container gardener. Additionally the community shares in the successes and challenges of the profession and offers of professional development.
The concept was brilliant because depending on where you live, you approach your container plantings differently due to weather and plant availability. Geography, in addition to each designer's own “take” on the competition, and personal design preferences, resulted in some pretty fantastic container designs using Goshiki Osmanthus that professional and homeowner alike can use as a template to design their own beautiful plantings.
In the Pacific Northwest, we have the luxury of planting containers in the fall and watching them thrive throughout the season and beyond. My design incorporated less traditional holiday plant material such as spruce tops and fir and instead focused on texture and color that would sustain through the winter season and long after. Also, since Monrovia’s Goshiki Osmanthus arrived on my front porch in late November, I wasn’t quite ready to embrace conventional red and green. I instead chose colors of plum, olive, and chartreuse that echoed the many colors of Osmanthus heterophyllus "Goshiki" yet still felt festive and royal. The planting was underplanted with spring blooming bulbs to further interest and offer additional pops of color later when the rest of the landscape still remains quiet.
Add Pizzazz with Botanicals and Holiday Decor
Regardless of where you live and whether you change out your plants for winter or not, you can get creative and challenge yourself to “style” a festive winter container planting.
Conventional holiday décor such as ornaments, twinkle lights, bows, and fake cardinals are fun elements to bring into your winter planters for the holidays, and can be easily removed following the season. Botanical elements such as berries, branches, pinecones, garland, lotus pods, and allium seed heads can embrace the beauty of simplicity while offering up a different sort of bling throughout the winter season.
I loved experimenting with both botanical and conventional décor, and ultimately landed on pine cones as my final touch.
Check out these additional simple ideas to bling up your winter plantings for the holidays. And, if you find yourself looking for further inspiration, check out additional creations from the designers participating in Monrovia's and Digging In Gathering's "Winter Style-It Container Challenge".
Cheers to amping up the style factor of your winter planters, and ringing in the season with a design that brings you joy!
