Living Centerpiece Plants: Learn How To Grow A Living Centerpiece

There are many interesting ways to use houseplants as a centerpiece. The centerpiece will last much longer than cut flowers and can provide an interesting conversation piece at the dinner table. What is a living centerpiece? It is a centerpiece for your table that uses living plants displayed in an interesting way, instead of just having cut flowers on the table.

How to Grow a Living Centerpiece

Growing a centerpiece is not all that difficult. It just requires a little time and creativity. There are many living centerpiece plants that you can use as well. Your imagination is the limit! Here are a couple ideas to get you started.

Living Centerpieces with Potted Plants

One way to create a beautiful living centerpiece is by embellishing terra cotta pots and slipping your houseplants inside or planting directly in the pot. Simply brush a white water-based (latex) paint all over the exterior of the pot, and also brush the inside of the rim. 

While the paint is still wet, roll the pot in a container that has decorative sand. Use just plain natural sand or colored sand – whatever suits your taste. The exterior of your pot will then have a nice texture. Place any houseplant that you like and group 3 plants together in the center of your table as the centerpiece. If desired, place candles between the pots for additional interest.

Plants like maidenhair ferns would contrast nicely with the rough texture of the pots with the sand exterior. But you can use any houseplant that suits your occasion or theme at any time of the year. You can create these centerpieces ahead of time and keep them growing in your windows, and then move them to the table when it is time to entertain. 

Living Centerpieces with Wood

You can also create a beautiful living centerpiece using a piece of driftwood or partially hollowed log. Line the bottom of the hollowed log, or the nooks in the driftwood, with moistened sphagnum moss. Then add a layer of soil. 

Next, choose whatever living centerpiece plants you’d like to use. Use your imagination, but plants like rhipsalis, various succulents (including trailing sedums), and air plants would make beautiful choices. Take the plants out of their pots, loosen the soil up, and place them onto the layer of soil that you placed on the wood. 

Add more moistened sphagnum moss to cover the surface of the soil. You can also take short pieces of bamboo skewers to display Tillandsias (air plants). Wrap a flexible wire around the base of each Tillandsia and also around the bamboo skewer. Then insert the skewer wherever you desire into the moss on your living centerpiece.

Designing and growing a living centerpiece is a fun and creative way to display your plants, and much more interesting than just placing cut flowers on your dinner table.