Nature Contained

Tomorrow my mom Rosie and I will be heading to Long Island to Environmentals Nursery to stock up on conifers for our winter container plantings. This weekend, we started the transition from fall to winter at the shop. We planted our bulbs and started the winter garden, we put in our holiday tree order (organically grown Christmas trees!) and we filled the antique Chinese mortars with cranberries- a simple thing we love to do every year. Next week we will start making our Cooperstown Wreath line and will deck the place out with garlands, wreaths, winter plants and bulbs.

I love coming up with different winter container combinations. I try to keep three color palettes in mind when I am designing. A red palette (above) may include heathers, red twig dogwood, ilex berries, tea berry, sumac pods, leucouthe and skimmia. A yellow palette (below) will have fun golden tipped pines like 'stoneybrook' and 'merrimack', ilex hellini and yellow tipped chamaecyparis. Golden orange ilex and yellow twig dogwood look great in here too.

The last palette I like to play with is one of silvers and whites which will have birch logs, silvery cedars and junipers and reindeer moss. Cut greens, pine cones and lichens get mixed into the palettes to complete the look.