Autumn Bouquets Indoors & Out

I sincerely hope you are not storing all of your vases, urns and pots away just yet.  Autumn is a wonderfully creative time of year to mix and match some of nature’s most interesting items; it is a period when your garden and the wild landscapes are full of inspirations that anyone can put together for a graceful, unique and eye-popping creation. 

Often autumn bouquets are the most stunning of any other time of the year, whether that is because we know this is the last hooray before winter moves in or if it is the vast array of fascinating objects and textures available.  The use of pumpkins, gourds, acorns, seedpods, grassy plumes and the last of the colorful blooms all signify the bitter sweetness of another season passing into the recesses of our minds, but don’t let it fade away unnoticed, embrace it and forage around your garden and the farmer’s market to fashion something striking.

The key to fall and winter outdoor boxes and pots is texture by having grasses for a spiky texture, branches for a knobby contorted look, flowers for a rounded and soft feel and foliage to bring in a glossy to variegated quality.  Maximize these various unique shapes by using plants and flowers that are tolerant to light frosts and biting winds.  Keep in mind that you’ll still need to water these outdoor beauties a few times a week but also consider that many of autumns bounty is equally as gorgeous when the blooms, plumes and branches dry. 

Dolores Beckwith, Skinner Garden Store Manager in Topeka, has some inspired ideas, she suggests, “Autumn boxes need not be filled with just mums and pansies, more simply bundles of wheat stalks, dried field corn and either native grasses or cut bouquets of grasses from your own garden can be added for filler or a tall backdrop.  Fill containers will pumpkins, gourds, crookneck squash and red honeysuckle berries to add a great extra boost of color.”

The container that you choose for either an indoor bouquet or an outdoor vessel can be as decisive as the flora that it showcases, try hollowing out pumpkins and lining them with florist’s foam that holds water, scour your garden sheds for old watering cans, pitchers, buckets, baskets, crates, wagons, antique suitcases, old milk jugs, the key is to look for the unexpected.  Beckwith adds another great autumn idea, she says, “Pinecones and acorns can go right from the natural fall display to the holidays by simply spray painting them gold or silver and displaying them in glass containers.”

We’ve selected an interesting container now simply add four straightforward ingredients- flowers, foliage, branches and grasses, this basic recipe to highlight autumn’s harvest will mix upright flora, mounding and trailing to keep the viewer’s eye moving and create all encompassing interest.  Start with the largest items to create balance when creating an outdoor pot or indoor bouquet, then fill in with the medium and small materials while constantly rotating the container as to not ignore any of the sides of this 3-dimensional object.  Pat Lechtenberg, a Douglas County Extension Master Gardener, is already bringing the outdoors in, she says, “I have a little bouquet with two beautiful dark red roses and a plume celosis in one room and in the kitchen in a white ceramic pitcher there is an assortment of flowers and foliage from the garden including sedum, penta, salvia, coleus and basil.  I like to add contrast in my outdoor containers to the fall bloomers like mums, kales and cabbages by mixing in dried flowers and grasses.”

Some of the most impressive arrangements for fall don’t even need to have flora in them, Beckwith states, “At this time of year, every part of the country has its own particular roadside treasures and one of my favorites is Kansas grown hedge balls or hedge apples.  They look fantastic piled in pots surrounded by evergreen branches and twigs.  Make sure to use a piece of felt or wax paper under them so not to ruin the finish of your table.”

So, don’t leave your porches, entryways, dining tables and foyers bare.  Pull on a wool hat, grab your clippers and go scan the garden or take a drive in the country and see what fabulous surprises Mother Nature has around any given corner prolong the season with all the bounty that is growing in the great outdoors.

Autumn’s Bounty:

            Branches:

·        Dried Snowberries

·        Acorn branches

·        Beautyberry branches

·        Winterberry branches

·        Dried Chinese Lantern branches

·        Curly willow branches

·        Bittersweet branches

Foliage:

·        Holly leaves

·        Boxwood sprigs

·        Cat tails

·        Corn Stalks

·        Seeded eucalyptus

·        Cabbage & Kale

·        Coleus

·        Hardy Dusty Miller

·        Dianthus foliage

·        Liriope

·        Dwarf cypress

Flowers:

·        Pansies

·        Creeping verbena

·        Johnny jump-up voilas

·        Dried hydrangea blooms

·        Chrysanthemums

·        Dahlias

·        Kalanchoe

·        Solidago (golden rod)

·        Asters

·        Sedum blooms

Grasses:

·        Japanese bloodgrass

·        Maroon grass

·        Any ornamental grasses growing in the garden

·        Any native grasses growing in the wild