Deck The Halls With Holiday Greens

Although much work remains to be done around the yard, the most passionate gardeners must temporarily put yard work on hold as thoughts turn from trimming our gardens to trimming our homes for the holidays.

Deck The Halls With Holiday Greens
Outside my window, tiny snowflakes drift across the landscape, covering the lawn and gardens with a gossamer veil of silver dust that accentuates the outlines of sleeping beds and borders and softens the stark silhouettes of our dormant trees and shrubs.
The feathery plumes of ornamental grasses and delicate seed heads of late-season perennials are particularly lovely this morning, with each intricate detail highlighted by this sprinkling of fluffy white flakes. Dozens of juncos, sparrows, and chickadees hop among the withered foliage gathering seeds while plump gray squirrels forage through the leaf litter, and there is a bustle of activity surrounding all the birdfeeders.
In the hours to come, accumulating snow may obliterate these magical details, but for now, the peaceful scenery is mesmerizing as the puffy flakes gently float to earth.
Although much work remains to be done around the yard, by mid-December even the most passionate gardeners must temporarily put yard work on hold as thoughts turn from trimming our gardens to trimming our homes for the holidays.
Wreaths, swags and holiday decorations adorn nearly every home, and neatly bundled Christmas trees can be seen atop many a car roof traveling along our local highways. Magical, dazzling displays of twinkling lights illuminate the evening sky as brightly lit candles sparkle in windows to welcome home tired shoppers. The holiday rush is on!
After many years of gathering greens, branches and berries, I have developed a system for collecting fresh greenery, knowing just where to find the prime materials to suit my decorating needs.
A few select meadows and vacant wooded lots supplement the clippings I procure from my own landscape. A pair of pruning shears is always under the seat of my car so that I can perform my civic duty by pruning neglected roadside plantings.
The eastern white pine, with its long, soft green needles lightly touched with a hint of blue and silver, offers numerous benefits including enduring foliage, delightful fragrance and decorative cones. Their long branches make them ideal for wiring together as the basis for garlands and swags to adorn fences, doorways and mantels. Its primary drawback is its tendency to ooze a sticky white sap. I wear gloves during the collection process and place these boughs in a separate bag, allowing them to harden off for a day or two while taking care to protect surfaces from the pitch.
The branches of eastern red cedars, actually members of the juniper family, are an annual favorite for my holiday decorating. They provide marvelous texture, vary greatly in color, and maintain their appearance throughout the holiday season even without water. Prevalent in overgrown pastures and along our roadsides, their scale-like green needles may be tinged with blue, copper, or bronze. In addition, the female of the species may bear clusters of small blue berries that further embellish decorations.
A traditional foundation shrub, the family of yews (Taxus) ranks high among the most durable and useful shrubs for both landscaping and decorating needs. Available in both prostrate and upright forms, their narrow, flat, deep green needles last for weeks once cut and provide excellent contrast to other greens. Shade tolerant, these shrubs respond to regular shearing and shaping.
Unfortunately, yews are often a magnet for foraging deer, and I have watched these creatures dismantle an entire arrangement of mixed greens in my whiskey barrel in their quest for the yew branches that were part of the display.
Numerous cultivars of upright and prostrate junipers are valuable assets to the landscape. Junipers tend to be prickly and may cause skin irritation when handled, necessitating the use of gloves, but they offer wonderful long-lasting color and texture. There are a profusion of blue-tinted varieties and others that demonstrate yellow-tipped foliage. Several landscape cultivars acquire mauve to violet tinges in the fall and winter, providing additional color possibilities.
Members of the false cypress family (Chamaecyparis) are personal favorites for landscaping. Similar in appearance to members of the arborvitae (Thuja) family, false cypress provide an oriental flare to designs.
Hinoki and fernspray cypress offer rich, deep green foliage while yellow-tinted varieties furnish stunning contrast to green or blue-green foliage thereby brightening the dullest winter landscape and adding pizzazz to an all green wreath. The thread-leaf cypress forms graceful, mop-like mounds of delicate blue-green or yellow-tipped foliage which contributes a wispy, cascading texture to both a landscape and floral design.
Holiday decorations composed of needled greens of varying color and texture are greatly enhanced by the addition of broad-leafed evergreens. The lustrous, shiny foliage of traditional holly, Leucothoe, Japanese holly, boxwood, PJM rhododendron, creeping euonymus, and mountain laurel provide appealing contrasts of color and texture.
For a spark of color, I seek out stunning stands of bright red winterberries, wild rose hips, and cedars covered with icy blue berries as the birds have already stripped my landscape of nearly all its colorful fruits.
The fuzzy red conical clusters of staghorn sumac are long-lasting, decorative accents for holiday designs and unlike its poisonous relatives that bear creamy colored berries, it does not cause skin irritations. Queen Anne’s Lace, milkweed pods, and finely-textured branches have already been gathered and sprayed gold, silver, or white and sprinkled with glitter, while tacky, to add a little sparkle to holiday designs.
With the return of chilly temperatures and the season’s first snowfall, it is hard to deny that winter season has arrived but the picture postcard winter wonderland outside my window rekindles the holiday spirit as I begin to deck my halls with holiday greens.
Suzanne Mahler is an avid gardener, photographer and lecturer who has been developing the 1.5-acre property surrounding her home in Hanover, Mass., for more than 30 years. She is a member of two local garden clubs, past President of the New England Daylily Society, an overseer for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and is employed at two garden centers.
author: Suzanne Mahler



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