Quick Winter Spruce-Ups: 8 Ideas for Seasonal Garden Style

Use seasonal colors to create an elegant new look with a palette of burgundy, bright green, and white.

1. Dress a tabletop – Arrange miniature deep green conifers around a trio of taller lime green ones in a low taupe bowl. After holidays, plant in garden beds.
2. Add lighting – For soft glow at night, wrap tree trunks and branches with white lights. Define borders with small candles in glass holders along mow strips, walls, walkways.
3. Warm up furnishings – Make patio chairs inviting with seat cushions and pillows in outdoor fabrics matching flowers. White fabric picks up border's white blooms, adding to serene palette.
4. Brighten a border – Supplement existing plants (azaleas, ferns) with edging of white cyclamen. Tuck lamium or similar variegated plant between cyclamen for lacy skirt of frosty greenery.
5. Plant a border in pots – Enhance narrow in-ground beds with a row of potted plants. In a small shaded side yard, cylindrical chocolate brown pots filled with white cyclamen line up against a raised border's low brick wall, making fern-filled planting appear deeper.
6. Accent the front entry – Flank entry with potted plants. Fountain-like burgundy cordyline plays off white cyclamen and plum 'Palace Purple' heuchera in bowls atop brick pillars. Pot at base contains white cyclamen, lamium, red nandina.
7. Hang a simple wreath – Welcome family and friends with an evergreen wreath from a ribbon coordinating with flowers and foliage. Tie to a gate, or hang several at different heights from tree branches.
8. Group pots – Dress a doorstep with containers of different sizes but same color, containing plants echoing garden's overall scheme. Smallest pot: fiber optics plant with heuchera, lamium, cyclamen. Left pot: nandina against lamium, cyclamen, hellebore. Tallest pot: fine-leafed rosemary, cordyline, cyclamen, heuchera.

Related stories: Give plants this year; Light up the night; Beautiful wreaths and garlands; Easy gardening with containers.