How to Incorporate Houseplants Into Your Holiday Decorating
If you want to take a fresh, modern approach to holiday decorating, houseplants are a creative way to bring some serious holiday color and style! They’re vibrant, beautiful, and certainly the more eco-friendly option. While those plastic decorations sit in storage for eleven months out of the year (and eventually end up in the trash), your houseplants will bring so much energy and life into your living space—not just in the winter, but all year round!
Here are some clever ways to use indoor plants in your holiday decorating, as well as some ways to spruce up your existing plants so they fit the holiday vibe.
5 Ideas for Incorporating Houseplants into Holiday Decor
There are endless varieties of indoor plants to choose from, which means you’ll never run out of ways to incorporate them into holiday decorating! We chose some of our favorite ideas for winter 2020, so you can give your home a gorgeous winter makeover with plants instead of those storage bins full of plastic holiday decor taking up space in the garage!
Alternative Mini Tree Houseplants
If you don’t have a ton of free space in your home for a full-size Christmas tree, get a baby tree instead! While there are plenty of potted conifers that have a more traditional style, we really love the look of alternative plants with a distinctive style that still kinda fits the Christmas vibe.
Look for plants with an upright growth habit and sturdy branches, like aloe, haworthia, or even fragrant rosemary! Add little fairy lights and lightweight ornaments or garland to get the full effect.
Gold and Silver Sparkle
Variegated plants are super popular right now, bringing dimension and flair with their multicolored leaves, streaked and spotted with eye-catching accent colors. For the holidays, we recommend opting for variegated plants with gold or silver highlights. The metallic, frosted effect is so on-point for the season.
Pothos is an awesome go-to variety, with several different gold and silver variegated options, and a dramatic trailing effect that looks gorgeous in hanging baskets.
Holiday Decor Centerpieces with Houseplants
One of the easiest ways to decorate with plants for the holidays is by creating a custom table centerpiece! Cluster an assortment of plants in the middle of the table, with taller, more showy plants in the very middle and smaller, shorter plants like miniature succulents and tillandsia around the edges to balance the shape and sightlines.
Add in some little accent pieces like citrus fruits, pinecones, glass ornaments, ribbons, and a couple of candlesticks (with the wick far enough away from the plants to avoid catching fire). It doesn’t have to be perfectly symmetrical—just experiment with different sizes, colors and textures until you’re pleased with the results.
Bold Red Houseplants
Most plants are green, so that checks one of the boxes for Christmas colors, but many other varieties have bright red accents, so they totally meet the criteria! Tall bromeliads with their electric red bracts make a big splash and are perfect are focal points for centerpieces and mixed arrangements.
Kalanchoe is one of our favorite flowering succulents, and the red flowering varieties are so festive and fun. Others like cryptanthus and aloe have all-red varieties that’ll really pop if you place them amongst your existing green plants.
Get Creative with Succulent Holiday Decor
Succulents are so versatile in the ways you can decorate with them because their root systems are so shallow and require less potting medium. This allows us to do things like mount them on vertical hanging frames or driftwood planters.
For the holidays, there are a million online tutorials for succulent decor crafts like holiday wreaths, mini Christmas trees, hanging terrariums that look like glass ball ornaments, and even just basic mixed arrangements in cute holiday containers saved from Christmasses past.
How Do I Decorate My Houseplants for Christmas?
If you already have an impressive collection of plants and don’t want to add too many more into the mix, there are all sorts of ways you can style your plants for the season! Here are a few easy decorating ideas to glam up your greenery!
1) Classic Holiday Decor: Bows and Boughs
You can never go wrong with a little bit of gift ribbon and some evergreen cuttings. Tie bows around the base of your plant pots with a wide ribbon, and stick in a few fresh pine sprigs for a fancy touch.
2) Place Existing Pots Inside Larger Decorative Pots
Repotting your plants can stress out their roots a bit, so it isn’t worth completely repotting them into decorative containers just for the holidays. Instead, see if you can procure some festive pots that are slightly larger than their current containers, so you can pop them in and out with ease!
3) Fairy Lights
Delicate string lights on fine wire are so easy to decorate with, with a twistable, scrunchable material that holds its shape yet doesn’t weigh down your plants. These inexpensive lights are available in assorted colors like gold, silver, or copper, so depending on your holiday decor color palette, you can find a style that suits your look! Many are battery-operated, so you don’t have to worry about clunky extension cords.
4) Water Orbs
Round, glassy ornaments are par for the course when it comes to holiday decorating, so water orbs work perfectly! Their swirls of color have a magical quality about them, almost like a snowglobe, and if you plan on visiting relatives out of town for a few days, water orbs will keep your plants hydrated while you’re away!
5) Ornaments on Stakes
A few skinny, delicate stakes can be pressed into the soil of your potted plants without damaging the roots. You can purchase ornaments on stakes or make your own with existing ornaments, some wooden kebab skewers, and a little bit of hot glue! It looks best if you keep your ornaments consistent with a theme, like gold stars, silver snowflakes, or cute North Pole characters.
If bugs are wreaking havoc on your houseplants and you need to get rid of them ASAP, or if you’d just like to prevent them from appearing in the first place, visit our Orange County retail plant nursery to see all the different products available for safe home use. If you have any questions about the products or how to use them, feel free to contact the shop to speak with one of our experts for some intel!
