I love to use things from the garden for all sorts of decorating inside and out. About two weeks ago I emptied most of my outdoor annual containers including the two planting troughs hanging off my porch. It will probably be a few weeks until I switch over to winter greens, but I don’t want to look at bare soil either. Out to the yard! I am lucky to grow several varieties of hydrangeas, grasses and other plants with nice fall color that are also great to use in dried arrangements.
I started with my empty trough first adding some ‘Little Lime’ hydrangea blooms with the darker, more open ‘Quick Fire’ hydrangea blooms behind. Once I had those in place I used some of the brown fronds from my long faded Ostrich ferns I found poking up in my shade garden.
With those in place I added more hydrangea blooms of both kinds to fill in the empty spaces.
Now I wanted a bit more color so back to the yard to clip a few plumes from my Miscanthus ‘Silver Feather’ and some stems from a ‘Prairiefire’ crabapple, ‘Centerglow’ ninebark and ‘Autumn Brillance’ serviceberry.
These I added in here and there for a pop of color and to really tie it all together. The leaves on the ninebark and serviceberry stems will wither and fall off in a couple of days so they would be great for an event otherwise plan on replacing them regularly or substitute some life-like leaves for a longer lasting arrangement. You can do this with any container outdoors or in a vase or galvanized bucket to display indoors too. It never hurts to give everything a light treatment with a matte poly spray to help keep everything together and minimize shedding indoors.
