winter greens arrangements

While winter is not the time for colorful fresh flowers (in most places), you can still pull together really pretty arrangements with winter greens. I asked my mom (the gardener and expert on all things flowers and arranging) to help me transform simple greens from our yard into pretty arrangements.

The inspiration: an antique edition of Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau- A beautiful reflection on simple living in natural surroundings.

We started by collecting different kinds of greens from each of our yards. In the Pacific Northwest we have lots of pine, evergreens and fir trees, holly, herbs that last through the winter, a variety of different shrubs with berries, branches and twigs, TONS of moss and we even collected dried up flowers. Next, my mom got to work transforming all of our greens into arrangements!

TIP: Regardless of where you live try looking in your background for leaves, plants, branches or anything green!

Slices of thick branches make a perfect base for a tiny little tree. Simply drill a hole and place your branch into the hole- add a little hot glue for stability.

Use the little trees around the house, at place settings or even as a centerpiece.

You can transform any kind of sturdy branches, driftwood or logs into a candle holder by drilling holes for candles.

All kinds of objects and things can be used for a vase. We wanted to stay within our nature theme so we grabbed a large moon shell from the shelf and filled it with greens.

TIP: Floral foam can be used to transform all kinds of vessels into a flower vase- even those that don't sit flat. Soak the foam in water, fit it into your vessel and then insert the greenery.

My mom loves using floral frogs in her flower arrangements and she decided to use one of her glass vintage frogs and filled it with different heights of branches and topped it off with a clay star.

We used a wood container, put a jar filled with water inside and then arranged the greenery.

Use herb wreaths as decor or even at a place setting.