What to Grow For Winter Home Decoration

What to Grow For Winter Home Decoration

By Diana Dhaliwal, Master Gardener

So many lovely decorations can be made with natural things and thereby prevent more plastic from going into landfills. Think of the winter holidays as a time to plan ahead, to make your seed and plant orders for next year’s decor.

I usually order some annual flower seeds to scatter around in a sunny spot, enjoy their pretty blooms and then cut and dry their seed heads. Probably one of the nicest is Nigella damascena which comes in a variety of colours, although the clear sky blue is my personal favourite. We all know the poppy seed head of Papaver somniferum, one of the annual poppies with pink to purple colours, giving us a dual use of summer colour and winter décor. A lesser known and harder to source annual is Nicandra physalodes otherwise known as shoo-fly plant. It is an annual with lantern-like seed heads which are great in winter arrangements.

 

Some grasses are very lovely dried such as millet ‘Jade Princess’ or millet ‘Purple Majesty’. Both produce wonderful dark brown bottle brush seed heads which dry very well. As well, they are marvellous pot plants for the summer and can be started easily from seed or bought as annual plants. An annual easily started from seed, sorghum black broom corn, has the dual use of dried ornamental or being made into a broom. Although teasel (Dipsacus) makes a lovely seed head it is an invasive species and should not be grown.

Bulbs and perennial plants can also contribute to winter décor. Papaver orientale has a gorgeous bright red flower followed by a big poppy type seed head. Alliums all produce interesting seed heads, my favourite being A. cristophii which has a huge seed head. It is out of our zone so usually will not survive our winter. The pretty oval brown seed head of Echinacea, the big blue globe thistle Echinops ritro and steely blue Eryngium will add to a home arrangement.

Another type of flower is the dry flower. Examples include Helichrysum, Gomphrena, Statice and German statice (Limonium tataricum). There are a huge number of flowers that dry really well; techniques are easily looked up and planting them with a view to winter decoration is worthwhile. Suggestions are the flower heads of hydrangea, delphinium, Amaranthus caudatus ‘Loves lies bleeding’, achillea, astilbe, blue salvia and many others.

Some of our native prairie plants that grow in our gardens have lovely dried seed heads: turtlehead (Chelone glabra), blue vervaine (Verbena hastata), windflower (Anemone cylindrica), Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium) and three-flowered avens (Geum triflorum).

I haven’t mentioned vines such as grapevines and hops which can be twisted around to make wreathes. For a sturdier wreath one can grow red dogwood pruning it severely in the spring to encourage new young bright red and flexible straight shoots.

 

I usually grow some miniature gourds or pumpkins for the fall dinner table. I press red maple leaves in the fall for plate decoration and press flowers for pretty greetings cards.

It is possible to force spring flowering shrub branches to come into flower early. For our area you should probably wait until March before cutting branches and bringing them into the house. On a warmer winter day cut branches which are less than ½ inch in diameter and bring them into the house. Cut them again under warm water and slit up the stem. Put them in a bucket of water in a cool space and wait for them to come into bud and flower and then create a lovely arrangement ; these lend themselves to Ikebana style Japanese arrangements. It is important to change the water frequently to protect them from infection. The easiest shrubs to force are forsythia, crab apples, flowering almond and willows for catkins.

Most of our local garden centres can supply these seeds or plants. Perhaps even your gardening buddies may help source things. I hope that by thinking ahead we can decorate our homes with natural items and avoid buying more plastic for the landfill.

Photos: Diana Dhaliwal (with exception of the noted one)
Published: February 2022