Top 10 Tips for Creating Outdoor Christmas Arrangements

Christmas porch pots are the easiest method to decorate your outside entrance or deck inexpensively and quickly. If you need some pizzazz to greet visitors, create a live green arrangement with evergreens and twigs cut from your property. Jazz it up with something sparkly and you can leave it in place for weeks without any care. If you don’t have the available greens, many garden centers sell greens or even a ‘porch pot’ kit.

Top 10 Tips on Creating Outdoor Christmas Arrangements 

1. Use a winter hardy pot – fiber glass, metal, cement – not  terracotta as it can crack
2. Add water to soil or use oasis so that it is moist; The arrangement  will freeze in place as the weather turns cold
3. Cut your greens and place in trugs to hydrate for at least 24 hours prior
4. Spray Wilt-Pruf, an anti-dessicant that will keep the greens fresh, but be careful of some firs and juniper berries- they could lose their color with the application of the spray
5. Create outside in place as the container will become very heavy to move
6. Don’t use Styrofoam berries-only naturals- Styrofoam splits and reveals the white base
7. Use completed wreaths of greens as bases for urns
8. For center height and drama, use curly willow, dogwood branches, birch logs, or winter berry branches
9. Since most arrangements will be viewed from a distance, the bolder and larger, the better
10. Add large outdoor balls or other accents (glitter branches) for added drama

If you want something more permanent to last until spring, plant evergreens into your containers using different textures and colors and insert some winterberry branches for the WOW factor.

Long Lasting Arrangements

Once I empty my large pots and window boxes at the end of November, I can dress them up again with greenery which will last most of the winter. I keep the soil in them as that is the glue which will hold my greens in place.

Pot Insert

If you don’t have any soil filled containers, you can use a waterproof fiber pot filled with oasis instead. Once I finish arranging in a fiber pot, I place the whole thing into an empty outdoor container.

Wreath Trickery

A trick that I have used for a long time which will get you started in a hurry, is to buy a pre-made wreath of fresh greens and build upon that as a base.

Placing this wreath on top of the rim of the pot will hide most of the soil and you can stick your greens in and around it. Buy a ready-made or make your own.

Start by placing your wreath horizontally on top and begin adding your other plant materials. Once you insert stems through the wreath, that will anchor it to the container. For this container, I  began with adding gold tipped Arborvitae. Stick the branches through the wreath into the oasis or soil.

Insert Magnolia branches into the oasis along with yellow twig dogwood for drama.

Add some red-dyed seeded Eucalyptus for a pop of color.

I finished it off with large branches of gold winterberry and glittery pine cones.

Lay out your materials first to see what combinations look good and then place your materials into the pot, using the larger items first.