Create festive cheer with Christmas containers

Here’s how you can plant up colourful festive pots to brighten the garden or give away as special yuletide presents to family and friends as Hazel Sillver explains

- Hazel Sillver

SELECT a beautiful pot, then choose the plants to make up your festive display, including colourful stems, striking foliage and winter flowers. If you’re creating a container to brighten your own garden, you might choose a fairly large pot and fill it with a selection of plants, including a sizeable focal shrub (perhaps a dogwood) and smaller plants (such as dwarf conifers and pansies). But if you’re intending to give the pot as a gift, you need to be able to carry it, so plant just one young shrub or tree (such as an olive) or a gaggle of small plants (for example violas, a heather and a grass).

Consider the size of garden your recipient has. If they don’t have much room, opt for something small or a winter-blooming climber that isn’t too vigorous (such as Clematis cirrhosa). Avoid anything prickly, such as holly or mahonia, to protect small children investigating presents under the tree and make transportation easier. Also select plants that have some ‘wow factor’ via bright colours (red-stemmed dogwood ‘Sibirica’ or golden pansies, for instance) or scent (for example winter honeysuckle).

Traditional festive colours

Go for festive colours, such as the golden grass Libertia ixioides ‘Goldfinger‚‘ or bronze-leaved Carex comans, and Christmas-themed plants (ivy is ideal). For a winter wonderland feel, add dwarf conifers (such as Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Blue Moon’) and, to please the bees, include nectarrich heather and hellebore. Drama comes courtesy of black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Kokuryu’) or decadent ruby-maroon bergenia, while happy cheer is provided by the little faces of violas, which will flower non-stop until spring.