Health & Fitness
Fun DIY Outdoor Decorating Tips
Fall provides a wonderful opportunity for homeowners to get creative with their outdoor spaces without committing to permanent plantings or elaborate garden designs. Potted plants and portable props make for fun fall yard displays that can be arranged and rearranged with ease all the way through the end of November. (Note: Resist your inner Clark Griswold until after Thanksgiving. While we certainly admire the creative enthusiasm, exterior decorations should always reflect the current season or holiday.)
Wooden crates, barrels and hay bales are perfect settings for your seasonal container plantings, potted mums, ears of corn, pumpkins, and baskets of gourds; they add interest and give you the freedom to stack your staging to achieve different angles and multiple heights.
One of the design elements that we at Borst Landscape & Design are most often asked to assist with each fall is Container Plantings. Here are some of our fun tips and ideas:
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Repurpose: Consider painting your pumpkins white or cream to neutralize your color scheme or to provide background support while allowing the colors in the display’s flowers or Indian corn kernels to pop.
Go tall: Give your container planting height in the center and scale down as you work your way outward in each direction. Great choices for height are Millet, branches, grasses then scale down to kales, mums, etc. We also love to use branches of dried Eucalyptus, dried Diervilla, Curly Willow, Punk, Copper Beech and Hydrangea in our fall arrangements.Mummify: Alternate Mums with Cabbage or Kale around your container. One option would be to install three different colored Mums and three Cabbages/Kales around the center. You can change up the colors of the Cabbage/Kale, as well, or keep their tones consistent.
Pepper plants with interest: We like to add a cascading element to our containers with a few Ornamental Pepper Plants and cascading Carex branches. These are planted beneath the Mums and Cabbage and will spill over your container. We love the Ornamental Peppers for their bright yellow, orange and red colors and texture. For those of you who wish to stick to flowers, however, Pansies are great alternatives to the Ornamental Peppers.
Details, details: Jack-Be-Little pumpkins, Sugar pumpkins and gourdes are put on stakes and inserted into the container’s soil. They can rest on top of the planting or be tucked around the edge. We usually incorporate a handful into each container.
Have fun: Characters appeal to passersby and can create a fun theme for your container plantings and entire yard. Pop some cute turkeys, boy/girl scarecrows, smiling pumpkin faces and “Happy Thanksgiving” signs into your arrangements.
Finishing touches: We love to break up bales of hay and stuff small bunches into the pockets around the rim of the container. Hay accents the pumpkins and plantings very well and it adds that touch of fall that finishes it off beautifully.
When your fall containers are planted and your props arranged, make sure your creations get noticed. Strategic lighting such as hanging lanterns can cast just the right spell on your autumn lawn and gardens. Strings of tiny lights can also be threaded through wreaths or corn stalks framing your entryway, and spotlights can showcase your favorite displays after the sun sets.
