Paul Zammit’s step by step guide to creating an eye-catching winter arrangement.
Materials:
- Cone clipped boxwood (in 3 gallon plastic pot)
- Faux bois concrete planter with drainage holes
- Fresh material, evergreen boughs, one bundle of each (sold in 3lb bundles) of white pine, BC cedar, Silver fir, Douglas fir, coned cedar, southern magnolia tips
- Dried materials: Mintola pods (12), Palm cups (12), mahogany pods (12)
- Cold resistant outdoor seasonal bobbles (silver and green), 12 of each
Place clipped boxwood into the concrete planter. In this case the boxwood was not planted into the concrete planter but kept in its original plastic pot
Insert cut stems of white pine into soil at the base of the boxwood. Push the cut ends of the pine into the soil as deeply as possible to ensure they will not be displaced by the wind
Do the same with the silver fir. Note, in this case the boughs (branches) of the silver fir are being inserted so that the silver undersides of the needles are visible
Add BC cedar
Add southern magnolia
Remove and put aside some of the lower leaves before inserting the stems into the arrangement
Add mintola, mahogany and palm cups. When doing so, create clusters
Wire previously removed magnolia leaves together with floral wire into clusters of 3- 5 leaves per bunch. Then… carefully secure to the boxwood
Add mahogany, mintola pods and palm cups to each cluster of magnolia leaves
Add tips of the coned cedar
Add silver weather resistant bobbles
Follow with green bobbles
Add outdoor lights
Care: Water arrangement every three to five days until temperature remains below freezing
First featured in Marjorie Harris’s “Your complete guide to indoor winter gardening” in the Globe and Mail on November 21, 2015.
