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 Create
Your Own Winter Containers
By Melinda Myers
[November 15, 2025]
Add a bit of
seasonal beauty to your front steps, window boxes, and other outdoor
spaces with winter containers. Fill them with greenery, berries,
cones, baubles and more. You’ll find many of these items in your own
backyard and more at your favorite garden retailer.
Collect a few evergreen stems, interesting seedheads and pods,
colorful stems, and fruit and berry covered branches from your
landscape. Plants you enjoy in the winter garden are good candidates
to include. |
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Many native plants make excellent additions to
winter containers. Include berry-laden stems of plants like
winterberry, dried flowers of smooth hydrangea, colorful stems of
red twig dogwood, branches of paper bark birches and fruit from
native crabapples, hawthorns and roses.
Collect a few evergreen cones and harvest some stems topped with
seedheads and pods from gardens and native plantings. Add some airy
texture and motion to your winter containers with native and
ornamental grasses. Leave them in their natural state or add some
paint and glitter for a bit of bling.
Do not include invasive plants like phragmites, teasel and oriental
bittersweet. These will drop seeds in your landscape and soon become
a problem in your gardens and surrounding natural spaces.
Convert one or two of your summer or fall containers into a winter
display or start with an empty planter. Make sure the container you
select can tolerate winter weather. Concrete, iron, metal, wood and
fiberglass containers are best suited for year-round use. Even
plastic pots will last for a few years when left outside and kept
safe from damage by snow shovels and snow blowers.
Make sure the pot has drainage holes to prevent
waterlogged soil and water from overflowing the pot. Fill the
container, up to an inch below the rim, with a well-drained potting
mix, sand or topsoil. The soil helps hold the greenery, twigs and
other materials in place and adds weight to keep the pot upright
throughout the winter. Add a rock to the bottom of lightweight
containers to prevent them from blowing over in the wind.
Use a mix of evergreens to provide a variety of textures, various
shades of green and a backdrop for the items. Pine, spruce,
arborvitae, boxwood and junipers may be growing in your landscape
and most of these are available at garden centers. Spruce tips make
it easy to create vertical accents in your containers. Select fresh
greenery with pliable branches and firmly attached needles. Secure
the stems by placing them at least four inches into the soil.
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Next, add the other materials you purchased or
collected from your landscape. Create vertical interest with
colorful and fruit-laden stems and branches. Tuck in seedheads,
pods, cones and colorful branches for added interest throughout the
arrangement. Depending on your style, add artificial materials such
as ribbon and outdoor ornaments. It’s your opportunity to be
creative.
Water thoroughly to remove air pockets and lock your ingredients in
place. Keep the soil moist until the potting mix freezes to extend
the beauty of your winter arrangement. If possible, set your planter
in a sheltered location out of drying winter winds and sunlight to
keep it looking good even longer.
Once your container is complete, it’s time to relax and enjoy your
favorite winter activities and celebrations.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books,
including the Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small
Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything”
instant video and DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s
Garden Moment TV & radio program. Myers is a columnist and
contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was commissioned
by Summit for her expertise to write this article. Myers’ website is www.MelindaMyers.com.
[Photo courtesy of MelindaMyers.com]
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