The growing season is over, but we can still enjoy planters throughout the winter. In fact, front porch pots are one of the best ways to use your green thumb during the cold months. Instead of planting flowers, you can use all kinds of evergreen clippings, berries, bows, and more to create elegant planters that will last throughout the holidays and beyond!
What to Use in a Winter Planter
Outside in the winter, flowers won’t survive. In fact, you won’t be planting anything in your planters. Instead, use branches and clippings from dormant or dried plants. Here are the most popular materials:
- Evergreen Boughs: They are the greenest part of the winter landscape and the main component of winter planters. Any kind of fir, spruce, pine, cedar, and juniper is ideal!
- Berries Branches: Any branches with berries still on them make great color accents in a winter planter. Try using clippings of winterberry, holly, or rosehips.
- Deciduous Branches: Leafless deciduous branches make a great centerpiece. Any branches that are colorful or interesting, like red osier dogwood, white birch, or curly willow, are ideal. But really, the bark of any branch makes a good contrast to the evergreens.
- Pine Cones: Big pine cones among the greenery bring extra character, texture, and color to the design.
- Ribbons and Bells: Ribbons and bells bring a classic holiday theme to your front porch planter. In fact, any kind of Christmas ornament brings a festive touch. You can anchor them to the soil with a wire or rod or nestle them among the branches.
- Extra Color Accents: The above materials are enough to make many kinds of gorgeous front porch pots. But if you’re looking for something extra special, try adding dried leaves, dried flowers, or dried seedpods. You can gather hydrangea flowers, lilac seed pods, poppy pods from your yard or seek out dried leaves, like eucalyptus, from your garden center.
Winter Front Planter Design Tips
- Thriller, Filler, Spiller: Just like a front porch planter in any other season, this tried and true technique creates a beautiful design. The thriller is the centerpiece that grabs your attention, the filler fills in most of the space in the planter, and the spiller flows over the edges to create a look of abundance.
- Add Lots of Texture: Stock the planter full of greenery, berries, branches, and other accents. Overflowing pots are heartwarming symbols of holiday abundance. Plus, if any boughs fade past their prime, you can remove them and still have a full arrangement.
- Bursts of Color: Who said winter was grey and drab? When you gather the most colorful winter plants together into your planters, you’ll create vibrant and rich displays.
Winter Front Door Planter Ideas
How do you bring all of these ideas and materials together? Here’s an example:
- With an empty pot of soil, start by arranging a centerpiece, like red dogwood twigs. Place them at the center, shooting up into the air.
- Surround them with the evergreen boughs of fir and pine.
- Then add juniper or cedar boughs around the edge of the pot, spilling over the sides, with some mixed in among the fir and pine.
- Finally, add berry branches and pine cones. Finish it off with a bow of ribbon.
- Pro tip: Water the soil thoroughly once everything is placed; this will cause the soil to freeze and anchor in all your elements within the soil.
These are the basic steps of an attractive front porch winter planter. You can substitute parts or add different color accents as you see fit.
More Front Porch Decorations
Porch winter planters go beautifully with front door wreaths. For even more greenery, you can drape evergreen garlands around your front porch pillars, along with ribbons. And of course, don’t forget the Christmas lights.
You can find a lot of the materials for a front porch winter planter right in your yard. But if you need anything extra, drop by your local garden centers in Bloomingdale and Carpentersville!
Platt Hill Nursery is Chicago’s premier garden center and nursery in the Chicagoland area.