I’ve admired for years winter containers put together by some of my very favorite garden accounts. I’ve admired my own MIL and mom’s winter containers, but I finally had the time and energy to put some together myself this year!

Even though this is my first time doing winter containers, I love that it’s a cross between outdoor gardening and flower vase arrangements. You can play with and re-cut, re-arrange as much as you want! Watering doesn’t matter as much if it’s below freezing, and you can make it all look just to your liking!

To put together these winter containers, I had picked out the containers around my home that I wanted to spruce up with evergreens this winter when I pulled out my annual flowers this fall, and I left the potting soil in the pots. The most cost effective way to create a base for your arrangement 😊. I’ll clean out the old potting soil in the spring before I re-pot them with spring flowers!

This summer, I specifically cut some hydrangea heads to dry and use in these arrangements. You don’t have to do this! I just wanted them to dry closer to their color at the time versus brown. I could certainly go out to my bushes now that are covered still with brown dried hydrangea heads and cut them to use in arrangements.

I actually used a dried vase of hydrangeas in my fall decor on my mantle. Can you spot my dried limelight hydrangeas??

I bought about 75% of my cut greens from my local flower nursery, and then harvested the remainder from trees around our house.

Once I had all my greens and had given them a prune and let them have a good drink of water when I got home, I drenched my potting soil in the container with water. Drenched it. And I’m still adding water to the soil every couple of days to keep it moist because our weather has been unseasonably warm this December!

Then I started playing around with my greens, but here’s my basic recipe for a winter container:

-1- Put in your “accent” pieces first. For our front container, I chose a mini spruce as the centering piece surrounded by three various height birch branches (sold at the garden center and can be reused year after year.)

-2- Add floppy greens like cedar around the base of the container.

-3- Fill in with your upright pieces like fir branches up closer to your centering pieces. This is also where I added in my dried hydrangeas & some faux berry branches for height variation.

-4- Fill in moving down from your upright evergreens with more texture and height. I used pine branches from our neighbor’s tree that was hanging over into our yard to add a different texture and feel.

-5- Spray EVERYTHING with a wilt prevention spray. I bought this one on Amazon.

That’s it! Stand back and enjoy!

I added some twinkle lights to the center spruce for Christmas time. It makes me smile to see it each night all lit up.

And then I did the two containers on our patio in the back in the same way, except I used outdoor flicker candles as my center pieces. I’ve loved these so far – they are on a timer and come with a remote control. It’s so pretty to see the soft flicker of the candles on the patio from our kitchen window. They’d be perfect inside or out, and are nice and sturdy.

I used the same “recipe” as my front container. Add floppy stems around the base…

Add upright stems, and then fill in working down from your height stems to floppy base…

Beautiful during the day, and equally beautiful at night!

I stuck with a green and white color palette for my containers because my intention is to keep them until the spring. *Fingers crossed*. A lot of people use red berries and glass ornaments to accent their containers for the holidays. All of which are beautiful and give a pop of color!

I just love the look of greens and winter whites in the dead of winter. After the holidays, all of the red in my decor disappears, and I just have greens and whites inside, so I wanted to match and reflect that outside as well!

Tell me, would you put together a winter container? What are your favorite “winter” colors??