Need to have a scintillating holiday? Christmas and flowers are inseparable. You need not be a special occasion designer for Xmas holidays. Neither do you need to be on a budget. With simple crafty tips, you can still celebrate these holidays with a sensational festive touch. Everyone has at least a Christmas flower idea for a birthday gift or hanging basket.
Christmas festive season never comes round like weekends. We’ve rounded up simple handy tips worth trying during the winter, spring, or elsewhere this coming summer Xmas.
Feeling to relish some fresher ideas of what to do with your garden plants this Christmas? Read on to get unlocking senses to light up your holidays.
1. Poinsettia Indoor Tricks (Euphorbia pulcherrima)
Being a larger plant family, the poinsettia is popularly known as the Christmas season flower. Its sensitivity before the onset of colorful bracts (what seemingly attracts many people as being flowers) is like a privy inside the situation.
Growing Euphorbia pulcherrima from seeds, in particular, is not all easy. Traditionally, they are grown by garden shop owners. If you can’t have one ready around the Christmas season, you can buy it as gifts and presents.
Poinsettia does well in room temperatures ranging below 22 and 16 Celcius degrees.
If you were gifted poinsettia in full bloom (earlier on in the New Year say mid-January), be sure to cut it back and change its pot or planters.
- Fertilize the pots as necessary (earliest) from late February to late March using Cal-Mag 15-5-15
- Take them outdoors during the early morning sunlight
- Routinely water while taking them out for early sunlight
- Mark early September on your diary
- Move them to a greenhouse or indoors where they could treat themselves with indirect light or grow light
And what! Enriched green, pink, purple, and red bracts. The colors to brighten up your home throughout December to January.
You may prefer a standalone complement to indoor décor or artificial ornaments in addition. Choose your holiday favorite according to your festivity touch.
- Cut fresh pink-bract poinsettias and place them in a jar or mug with ice cubes: in a basket of berries along with pine leaves, fir, and cedar.
- Fairy lantern light in a (bowl-shape) basket with red and white poinsettia flowers
- A basket with red poinsettia bracts, pinecones, and red berries with a golden-colored ribbon tie
- Red poinsettias bundled together with green bush fern and black artificial flower roses
- Pink poinsettias with white berry sprigs, twinkle lights, pine leaves attached with their pinecones
They may start to discolor if they get sunburnt. Avoid extreme cold window winds or hot radiator rooms. They can bloom again next x-mas season as long as they are watered, re-potted appropriately, and looked after properly.
2. Indoor & Outdoor Cyclamen
Apart from poinsettia’s popularity, cyclamen is the other Christmas flower to go for. What makes these house plants a top holiday love choice? They bloom fully during the winter when Christmas is close. Under perfect growth conditions coupled with good care and maintenance practices, they will continue to thrive after Christmas festivities are gone.
Originating from the Mediterranean hot and dry summers; cool and wet winters, these flower plants have a lot to offer. Just like poinsettia, cyclamen may require super conditions of tropical delicacy elements at certain stages of growth.
Being a perennial plant, it naturally stops blooming when spring arrives. This calls for attention. Bring it indoors! And don’t stop there. Keep on checking soil moisture.
They come in white, pink, and purple colors. If you intend to buy or order an online delivery, be precise. Cyclamen whose budding has reached the peak – you will notice them in plenty in picture displays.
Here are ideas if you have a special birthday or gift-giving day:
- Arrange crimson cyclamen in small heart-shaped baskets. Prepare a similar pattern of white and red candles outside the basket and place them on Xmas or dining table
- Make it colorful with your recent holiday best wishes card presents, fairy light or artificial ornaments including pinecones
- Make a simple surprise package of (dark) purple cyclamens in yellow, orange or green shopping bags
- Hang flowering ones on the porch or situate a few on the East-facing windowsill
Thankfully goodness! You can grow them in hanging baskets. combination too. Hang them and they will naturally light up your outdoor open space in the front yard of the garden! One of the gorgeous outdoor species is the Cyclamen hederifolium.
However, without caring for them well, things may go wrong. Leaves may start turning yellow when it gets too warm and wet. So do your best to care for these plants to reap their season-to-season benefits.
3. Phalaenopsis Orchid
Native to the Philippines and Northern areas of Australia, this Phalaenopsis species have thick-leaved plants. They do well under shady (greenhouse-like) conditions outdoors or with potted plants in well-aerated spaces and rooms indoors.
This is a spring and summer outdoor bloomer. Making them a top choice for x-mas flower ideas, they can be grown in pots or hanging baskets.
- Grow orchids in clear pots for easier root check
- When grown indoors keep your stationary fan on
- If you prefer hanging baskets install a ceiling fan to provide the cooling
- Arrange planter containers under window shields indoors if you like
These beauties can bring a sparkling instant transformational look in your study room and bedroom. Cut 2 – 3 white orchid flowers and a few stems. Place them in cool narrow wine tumblers.
In a large wide basket place potted white and pink orchid plants centrally. Alternate lavender and yellow orchid plants to fill up the gaps round. This can be a great trick for decorating an outdoor BBQ corner.
Out of the 60 – 75 possible varieties, some of the festive cheer best you should have are:
- cymbidium ssp.
- Brassavola ssp.
- Epidendrum spp.
- Miltonia spp.
- Vanda ssp.
- Ludisia discolor
- Dendrobium ssp.
4. Amaryllis for Xmas or Birthday Gift
As winter approaches, outdoor gardening becomes a chilly cold love matter. Surprise flower gifting can suddenly bring back a feeling of warmth inside, every season and for decades.
The western hemisphere and subtropical regions of America are known to value blooming amaryllis every holiday is around the corner – not just in winter.
In fact, in its optimal local conditions, this charming Xmas perennial flower blooms to its best in the summer.
More or less all amaryllis are bright and colorful bloomers. Summertime gorgeous bloomers for Xmas friend gift is as good as timely preparations (dormancy, re-potting, and blooming) before Christmas.
- Add a graciously simple arrangement or cut amaryllis Christmas star, amaryllis miracle, or Amaryllis Merry Christmas flower basket
- Ignite with hedgerow berries candles for your friend’s Xmas eve birthday
- Try fragrant or scent of freshly cut blooms of gardenia or lavender banquet
With its meaning originating from the traditional Greek names, being gifted amaryllis is a big statement of determination. A sense of pride.
5. Outdoor Hardy Helleborus ssp
Commonly known as Christmas rose or black hellebore, are easy to grow. Hybrid Helleborus varieties grow into upright clumpy bushes of red, purple, pink, white, and yellow.
Interestingly, their buds open when the Christmas season is approaching making them one of the best choices. The indoor calm conditions are preferably the best since they do thrive in dappled shade to full shade.
Go for red or white-flowered Christmas roses. Alternatively, grow black hellebore in well-drained alkaline humus-rich soils. And in terms of flower baskets below are some of the inviting outdoor ideas you can buy into:
- Choose wider planters or rectangle boxes
- Grow in shady outdoor
- Combine red Helleborus (HGC ice and Roses red) with purple cyclamen
- Place on top of stationary in outdoor chat rooms or over x-mas drawing tabletops for kids
Hellebores are fully hardy evergreens in pretty much all of the UK.
6. Victorian Mistletoe Ball Crafts
Festive cheer mood or Christmas wedding? Prepare your DIY Christmas kissing ball.
- Simply make 2 small 10 cm diameter wide circles using a flexible wire
- Tight-tie a few more wire curves in order that you have a ball shape
- Attach a few clips onto curved circles
- Fix your (mistletoe) fresh greenery loosely all-round while taking care, not to over touch
- Check for untidy spaces (if any insert more)
- Tie a cream white, red, or purple ribbon and you are ready to go
Here is an alternative method (plus video tutorial) on how to make an Xmas kissing ball.
Hang by the doorway leading to your backyard, above the bed or your private study table.
How about adding a DIY gift trick? Cut short fresh pine leaves and wild berries. Alternatively, buy a winter holiday bouquet from a nearby garden store and gift purchase centers.
If you are going for its evergreen bush, the European or American variety mistletoe can best be harvested later in the fall and winter seasons. This time around when the host – apple trees, hawthorn, lindens, or oaks – have begun dropping their leaves.
What do custom and traditional kissing under them and hanging them mean? They symbolize magic spells and mystical powers of good fortune.
7) More Flower Basket Flower Gift (Pictures)
December holiday festivities go on after Christmas day gift-giving and Boxing Day. There are more exciting Xmas flowers worth giving a trial.
a) Xmas Cactus
Thanksgiving/Christmas Cactus: A forced spring but natural fall bloomer, the Thanksgiving cactus produces red flowers naturally. This succulent has a unique beauty. All it needs to be shown is constant love and care for it to keep flowering.
b) Snowdrops
Reference
- MSU Extension. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_secret_to_getting_a_christmas_cactus_to_bloom_temperature_and_light. Accessed online 20 August 2022
- Mistletoe. Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/plant/mistletoe. Accessed online 20 August 2022