How to Keep Your Fresh Greens Thriving
Fresh greenery is hands down the best way to get your backyard and home holiday-ready. While they require a bit more upkeep than their artificial counterparts, you’ll be rewarded handsomely for your efforts with beautiful pops of freshness and colour that are sure to brighten up any space. This guide is here to help you get the most out of your winter greens, with tips and tricks to help keep them looking gorgeous all holiday season.
How Long Do Fresh Greens Keep?
Fresh greens will keep fresh for as long as two to three weeks indoors, and even longer when kept outdoors with five-star care. Although their beauty is shorter-lived than faux greens, the ambience they create is simply unmatched. Nothing makes a space feel like Christmas quite like the look and smell of fresh evergreens!
How To Care For Fresh Greenery
Fresh greens are the ultimate holiday multitaskers: you can use them to liven up your front porch planters, as fresh, edible garnishes in holiday cocktails, to decorate your dining table centrepieces, and so much more. Here’s everything you need to know to keep them fresh and healthy!
1. Choose Long-Lasting Evergreens
To get as many uses as possible out of your fresh Christmas greenery, choose varieties that last the longest. Boughs of hardy varieties like fir, birch, and pine will require less pampering and are much easier to keep fresher for longer.
2. Keep Your Fresh Cuts In Water
Evergreens need consistent moisture to keep their leaves from turning brown. Usually, they would be able to rely on Mother Nature for the water they need, but this is obviously not an option when you bring them indoors. After retrieving your freshly cut evergreen cuttings, you’ll want to keep them in water until you’re ready to decorate.
3. Mist Your Evergreen Decor
Remember: your evergreens love staying hydrated. To help keep them looking their best, mist your evergreen decor now and again with a spray bottle, moistening the needles thoroughly.
4. Provide a Cool Environment
Evergreens are Christmas plants through and through: they thrive in the winter cold. For this reason, you’ll want to keep them outside for as long as possible during the holiday season. Use your fresh cuts for additional outdoor holiday planters before moving them inside a few days before Christmas. You can then reuse them as holiday centrepieces, garlands, decorative boughs, and more!
5. Keep Them Out of The Sun
While sunny days in the spring and summer are great for your evergreen, the exact opposite is true in the winter. Winter sunlight will actually cause leaf burn on your evergreens, so keep them out of the sun to prolong their beauty. For the best results, keep them in partially sunlit parts of your home, or protect them from the sun under your front porch!
6. Keep Them Away From Vents and Heat Sources
Your evergreen can go into shock if the temperature is too hot, so make sure to keep it cool when you bring it indoors. To avoid harming your evergreen, ensure it’s far enough away from any heat sources in your home, including vents, furnaces, candles, lamps, and fireplaces.
7. Purchase Your Greens Right Before the Holidays
For the freshest centrepieces and decor, purchase your greenery and wreaths as close to your Christmas dinner or party as possible. If you’re using fresh cuts from your backyard, wait as long as possible before the holidays to harvest them.
8. Don’t be Afraid to Branch Out!
Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean you have to use the same traditional evergreen varieties. Topiary rosemary plants, potted ferns, and magnolia leaves are all great alternative options and will keep your home looking festive for longer than traditional Christmas greenery!
And that’s all there is to it; just a few simple tips and tricks are all you need to keep your cut Christmas greenery looking fine and fresh all season long! Looking to get started with fresh greens for holiday decor and front porch planters this holiday season? Visit our team today at Windsor Greenhouse in Abbotsford, BC!