No matter the occasion, indoor houseplants are an excellent addition to our holiday decor. We’ve gathered some great tips on how to spruce up your holiday displays inside the home and wow your guests all the way from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
Surround Your Seating Areas with Plants
Time to pull your plants off the shelves! Placing your favorite houseplants beside seating areas is a great way to make your guests feel more comfortable during holiday dinners and events. Purposefully arranging your plants can create a spot inside your home that everyone will feel comfortable in and enjoy.
Your dining room can also become a show-stopping display when you decorate it with seasonal houseplants! Plants like the bonsai tree can serve as table centerpieces for Thanksgiving and Christmas that you can decorate or surround with holiday decor, such as pumpkins, gourds, Christmas bulbs, and candy canes.
Make Your Kitchen Cozy
Just because you’ll be busy cooking in the kitchen doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some of the little joys of the season! Line up miniature succulent plants on the counters and window sills, along with mini gourds around Thanksgiving, for a moment of serenity amidst the cooking frenzy! Pair with a pumpkin spice candle, and this display will look and smell delicious.
Create a Great First Impression in Your Entryways
Your entryway is your guests’ first impression of your home—along with your porch—so make a statement! Bulbs such as paperwhites and amaryllis are always excellent options for festive and seasonal blooms that impress. You can use vines like ivy around pumpkins and harvest displays for Thanksgiving.
Of course, there is a lot of traffic around the front door, so you’ll need some tough plants that can handle the occasional bump! Snake plants or rubber plants can withstand the fluctuating temperatures from opening and closing the front door and even occasional brushing from your guests removing their winter coats.
Incorporate a Range of Colors
Don’t limit yourself to only decorating with solid green leafy houseplants for fall and Christmas. The holiday season is a great time to incorporate some additional color and variegation into the living spaces of your home. Consider decorating your living room with these colorful flower and houseplant combinations:
For Thanksgiving: snake plant, neon pothos, prayer plant, colorful aglaonema, croton, Chinese evergreen
For Christmas: poinsettias, cyclamens, holly, frosty fern, ivy, cypress, Christmas cactus
Decorate with Holiday-Themed Containers
Switch out your old pots for festive, holiday-inspired containers! You don’t even have to repot your plants—buy oversized containers that you can drop your plant into so that it gets a fresh look without the stress of repotting in the fall and winter. Red, orange, caramel, and yellow containers are great for fall, or you can hand-paint your own for a fun project with the family. Personalizing your holiday pots is always a great way to create a more homey atmosphere with your indoor plants!
Use Trailing Vines as Garland for Thanksgiving
Use your already established vining plants to trail over your fireplace on the day your family arrives. Decorating them with Christmas lights and bulbs will create a beautiful display in your family room. For Thanksgiving, you can use mini pumpkins and straw across the top of your mantel to achieve a more rustic look. The temperature change from the fire may stress your houseplant out, so make sure they’re trailing at a safe distance from the heat. Heartleaf philodendrons, jasmine, and creeping figs are all great options for creating your holiday mantle.
Add Christmas Skirts to Your Planters
Even your houseplants can have fancy Christmas outfits! Adding Christmas skirts to your houseplants is a super easy way to add some Christmas cheer to your planters that might not be so festive otherwise. You can buy matching ones to create cohesion throughout your home, match the themes in each space, or make it a family project with some fabric, a sewing machine, and lots of glitter!
There’s no limit to how creative you can get using your houseplants to spruce up your holiday spaces inside the home. Visit us at Platt Hill Nursery in Bloomingdale and Carpentersville, Illinois, for all your Chicago-area houseplant decorating needs.
Platt Hill Nursery is Chicago’s premier garden center and nursery.