Plant Your Holiday Porch Pots Now – These 7 Beautiful Plants Create a Spectacular Christmas Display
Why settle for decorations that only last a few weeks? Create beautiful seasonal containers that can brighten your entrance well into winter.
Holiday porch pots are a cheerful way to decorate your home's entrance for the festive season. These outdoor winter arrangements look beautiful and welcoming when placed near front doors, steps, or entryways to greet guests during the holidays.
As October ends, the holiday season approaches. Families make Thanksgiving plans, starting a season that lasts right through the new year. This is the ideal time to start putting together natural holiday decorations that bring bright colors and greenery to your home's entrance.
If you are ready to jump into a creative gardening project for winter, we’ve got the ideas to get you started. The basic idea is to combine beautiful plants and greenery to make spectacular seasonal containers. But you should plan to have some fun while you are doing it.
8 Top Plants for Holiday Porch Pots
The best plants for DIY holiday porch pots combine appealing structure with festive cut boughs. They should be hardy enough to survive cold weather and add winter curb appeal.
1. ‘Ice Breaker’ Korean Fir
Why not start with an evergreen that nobody else on your block is likely to display? This silver Korean fir cultivar is one of a kind: a curious, fascinating dwarf evergreen with twisted, curled silvery needles. The twisted needles of ‘Ice Breaker’ Korean fir (Abies koreana), available at Nature Hills, have frosted undersides, making it look as if it is perpetually snow-covered. These little beauties grow very slowly, getting to 2 feet tall after 10 years. They are hardy down to -20°F.
2. Winterberry Holly
It’s easy to find evergreen foliage plants without red berries, but harder to find red berries without evergreen foliage. That’s exactly why winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata) in holiday porch pots is totally intriguing. You can order a best-selling Berry Poppins winterberry holly from Plant Addicts.
These native hollies – growing in eastern Canada through the southern United States – are pretty plants all year long, but they become stunningly beautiful at the dreariest time of the year. They lose their leaves in autumn, leaving only the amazing crop of bright berries to light up your winter pots. They are hardy down to USDA zone 3.
3. Ornamental Cabbage
Ornamental cabbages and kales (Brassica oleracea) are cold-hardy foliage plants that provide exceptionally vivid white, pink, red, and purple winter colors for holiday pots. They are technically edible but are not grown for eating. Rather, they are cultivated for their bright, rose-like center rosettes.
Ornamental cabbage and kale plants maintain their bright structure and color well into freezing winter months. For a festive container, they can be combined with winter-hardy pansies, berried twigs, chrysanthemums, or ornamental grasses.
Pick up a four-pack of Song Bird Red Ornamental Kale Plants from Burpee.
4. Christmas Hellebores
You may know these stunning plants as hellebores (Helleborus niger), or as Christmas roses. Whatever you call them, they make fantastic additions to holiday porch pots, with their shining white flowers and strong, dark green leaves. The only issue with hellebores is that they usually don’t bloom until January – past the heart of the holiday porch pot season. But some cultivars bloom just in time for the holidays, such as ‘Christmas Carol Early’, 'Jacob', and 'Snowbells', available at Plant Delights Nursery. The Christmas rose is usually hardy to USDA zone 3.
5. Little Gem Norway Spruce
This dense, naturally round shrub is a perfect little ball of soft green needles. Its small size and low-maintenance nature make Little Gem Norway spruce (Picea abies 'Little Gem') a popular addition to your holiday porch pot. You can order a plant from Magic Valley Gardens at Walmart.
Norway spruce grows slowly, adding only about an inch or two in size every year and topping out at about 3 feet tall and wide. Don’t worry about winter weather – ‘Little Gem’ is hardy down to -40°F. The new growth emerges soft and bright lime, but by Christmas it will be a handsome forest green.
6. Coral Bells
The flowers that give Heuchera its common name of coral bells only appear in spring and summer. By the time the holiday season rolls around, you’ll appreciate this plant's incredible foliage. Coral bells offer a wide range of leaf colors beyond green, including apricot, bronze, pewter, burgundy, and deep purple. The foliage often adds even more enchantment with scalloped, wavy, or veined edges. Select ‘Caramel’ or ‘Peachberry Ice’ cultivars, both available at Plant Addicts, for foliage with rich tones and holiday warmth.
7. Trailing English Ivy
Many trailing “spiller” plants work well in holiday plant pots, but few are better than the classic evergreen trailing English ivy (Hedera helix), available in an ivy variety pack from Plant Addicts. This hardy vine softens the edges of holiday planters and offers all-weather resilience. It stays vibrant throughout the season and works well with flowers or small evergreen shrubs to create a festive feel. The cascading leaves create a rich, full look, balancing upright or mounding holiday plants.
Putting It All Together
If you’re ready to create gorgeous holiday plant pots of your own, a few practical tips will help. Let’s get down to the basics of how to put it all together.
The base of it all is the pots or containers you select. Choose pots in materials that can handle winter temperatures, like metal, wood, or even plastic. Avoid materials that will crack when the temperatures drop. Get pots that are big enough, but not too big. Generally, front door holiday plant pots should be between 12 and 30 inches in diameter and between 12 and 18 inches deep.
You’ll want to use potting soil in the containers. Leftover summer potting soil works just fine, but it’s best to buy fresh, like Miracle-Gro Organic Outdoor Potting Mix, from Amazon.
Next, you’ll want to put in the plants, and I suggest using a classic thriller, filler, spiller design. Start with the thrillers. These are the tall, eye-catching focal plants that make guests admire the pots. You can use one of the taller plants you have selected – like winterberry holly or ‘Ice Breaker’ fir – or you can use cut boughs after trimming the stems.
Get ready to layer in the fillers. This is the place for medium-height evergreens or foliage plants. Coral bells or ornamental cabbage work well in this role. Alternate textures and shades.
Last, add the spillers, plants with draping or trailing foliage. These go around the bottom edge of the container so that they cascade gracefully over the edges of the container.
Keeping Up the Holiday Spirit
Creating your plant pots is fun, but you’ll also have to put in a little effort to keep them going strong through the season.
This starts with care immediately after you set out the pots. Give each of them a deep watering, enough to saturate the entire soil. Excess water should run out of the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot. Make sure that’s the case, or your plants will die of root rot. It helps to add pot feet to elevate the containers off freezing patios.
Don’t worry too much about freezing weather. It is normal for the moisture in the patio pots to freeze. Keep checking the soil and add more water if the top inches are dry. Mist the evergreen branches during dry winter days to rehydrate the foliage. As the weather cools, cluster the containers close to the house wall to shield them from winter winds and create a microclimate.
