Make your own outdoor winter arrangement

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December 2nd, 2013

Last weekend, my Mom and I went to a workshop hosted by Connon Nurseries on how to make your own outdoor winter arrangement, it was fun, easy, and rewarding to see the finished product. Here’s how to make your own…

What you will need:

• A good pair of clippers
• Gloves
• A pot filled to 1 inch from the top with soil
• Greens and decorative material
• Goo Gone- helpful for cleaning your clippers after you are done

To start:

1. Decide whether you want an arrangement with a presentation side or an all ’round design.

2. Choose a style and colour combination. Look online or in magazines for examples or just look around in your local nursery, they should have hundreds of examples that are for sale. You can get very creative with an outdoor winter arrangement because of the wide variety of greens and decorative accents available.

3. Choose your materials and decorative material. Choose 3-4 different decorative materials of varying shapes and sizes for maximum effect. Be aware that specialty greens require protection from rain, snow and wind. Specifically, southern greens such as Carolina Sapphire, Leyland Cypress, Magnolia leaves and Eucalyptus leaves should be sheltered from frost. If you are unsure, it’s best to ask an employee.

4. Start by installing your upright element(s) towards the back for a presentation side arrangement and in the middle for an all ’round.

5. Give every stem a fresh-cut and add to the arrangement aiming toward the upright element. I did this with pine.

6. Create an outline of your final shape and size with the first few branches then fill in between those branches until the look is full. Remember to use the greens to their best natural advantage. For example, fir will always be stiff and more upright, while pine can stand tall or wisp out to the side, and cedar will cascade over the edge. One thing the instructor kept telling me was, don’t fight it!!

7. Once you are done filling in your arrangement with the greens, now is the time to add your decorative accents. You want to be able to see them, so try not to hide them.

So there you go, try it out, it’s definitely a fun project… and you can keep the decorations for the following year and just change the greens if you want. It helps to do this with someone else, my Mom and I split the costs on some of the accents since you are not going to use everything in the package.

One last tip, once you put the arrangement outside, make sure you water it until it’s cold enough to freeze that water in there for the season. When I put mine outside, it just happened to be during the first snowfall of the year!