Harvesting Holiday Decor from your Garden

Indigo Deany

Whether you leave your garden alone or you cut and tidy what you can before winter sets in, there are almost certainly plants in your yard right now whose end-of-season beauty can be brought inside for fall and winter decor. Using the last of this year’s bounty to decorate your home is a gorgeous way to honor and celebrate what has passed and what is to come, which is often exactly what we’re celebrating this time of year. There are many plants that can be found in your or your neighbors’ gardens that can be harvested right now for holiday decor –  it’s not too late, even if you didn’t dry flowers and foliage throughout the summer! As always, the garden is generous, if you know how to look at it.

Before we get to the plants, remember that holiday wreaths – for fall or winter – are not the only way to showcase plants in a festive manner, though they are spectacular. Table centerpieces, simple sprays, and arrangements in vases can enhance the holiday atmosphere in your home, if done with a little consideration. 

For fall-styled arrangements, you will rely heavily on dried plant material. You will be harnessing the spirit of the harvest season, so lean heavily on golden tans, deep browns, and impactful dried forms. Common garden plants that work well for fall ambience include: grasses, willow branches, echinacea, yarrow, lavender, hydrangea, lamb’s ear, statice, sea holly, and rosehips. Your echinacea and yarrow may already have gone dormant, but that’s okay! The shapes of these seed heads are robust and full of character, and their various shades of brown fit in perfectly with the autumn spirit. Grass plumes provide a spectacular show in the fall garden, and are perfectly suited for creating autumnal arrangements as well. Selectively harvesting plumes allows you to bring the beauty of the grasses inside while also maintaining their integrity outside. Grasses such as miscanthus, rye, and blue grama are showy options that add volume, movement, and light to dried arrangements, whether in a wreath or vase. Willow branches are fantastic for weaving a wreath itself, or adding linear visual patterns to other arrangements. Weave when freshly cut in order to maximize the flexibility these have to offer. There are some flowers that may still be blooming in your garden— these can be used once they’ve been harvested and dried for a few days. Hydrangeas, statice, lavender, giant sumac seed clusters, and even the fuzzy leaves of lamb’s ear can be harvested now, bundled and hung upside down to dry, and added when ready. You can add variations in color to the golden tones of fall arrangements using sea holly, baby’s breath, and rosehips (be mindful of thorns), each of which can be repurposed to great effect in winter arrangements.

Winter arrangements provide an opportunity to use a combination of both fresh and dried plant material, thanks to the seasonally thematic element of conifers! If you have a spruce, fir, pine, or juniper in your yard, you already have the primary plant material needed to create festive winter arrangements. When harvesting spruce, fir, and pine, cut the younger, springier offshoots from thick woody branches, which shouldn’t be cut. Be sure to harvest these branches in a symmetrical, spread out fashion on your tree, so as to camouflage where you have removed foliage. Keep your cuts clean and as minimal as you can, and don’t make any structural changes to your tree to avoid hurting it – pruning for these trees is best done in March or April, just before new growth emerges. Juniper can provide greenery for your winter decor as well, and smells delightful, but it really shines when you are able to harvest its foliage and gorgeous berries, which can come in shades of icy blue, lavender, green, and pink. Red twig dogwoods, so easy to find in gardens around the front range, also make fantastic additions to winter decor. Bare of leaves, their fiery red branches hold color for months while also providing interesting, curvy, linear structure to sprays or vases. Rosehips are another favorite of mine for winter holiday decor, as they are suggestive of holly berries but are much easier to find in our area. Rosehips range from tiny and electric red, to grape-sized and brilliant orange. Paired with the rich, moody green of pine boughs and cheery, wintery blues of juniper berries, rosehips provide a classically festive, timeless ambience for winter. The only thing you need to complete the dreaminess of your garden-harvested holiday centerpiece is a string of fairy lights, a chocolate truffle, and a record playing in the next room.

Originally published on October 28th, 2024.