A Thanksgiving Basket

A few years ago, we began what has become a tradition of eating our Thanksgiving meal outdoors in the late afternoon. The break in our usual dinner routine adds to the holiday feel and I love having meals in the garden. Yes, it can be a bit chilly here in Southern Ontario in October, but we put on warm coats and we light a fire. Hot, homemade food to tastes even better on a cool fall day!

This year I thought I would add to the festivities with a few decorative touches. Two things spurred me on. One: Last weekend I came across a wire basket that I forgot I even had. Two: I had a small container planting of mixed herbs that had served me well all summer, but had become pot bound and needed attention. 

Eventually I plan to harvest and dry a few of the herbs from the overgrown container. Others I will plant out in the garden. But for the short run, I thought I'd mix a few herbs with a some ornamental cabbages to make an arrangement for our Thanksgiving table.

Coconut liner (on the left) and sheet moss (on the right)

If you want to make your own arrangement, you may not have a wire basket with a readymade burlap liner like mine, but any wire basket could be made to suit. To line your wire basket, you could always use a square of burlap cut to fit. Alternatively you could line the basket with sheet moss (from a craft store) or use a coconut liner (from a nursery or garden centre).

The burlap interior of my wire basket was pretty porous, so before I filled it with potting soil I added a big square of landscape cloth (from the garden centre). On the very bottom of the basket, I placed a second rectangle of cloth just to make sure the bottom of my arrangement was going to stay dry. If you are really concerned that the bottom of the basket might get wet, you could always use some black plastic to line the interior instead of cloth (I'd cut up a heavy duty garbage bag if I was using this option).

I placed the black landscape cloth inside, trimmed it to fit, and then added some potting soil. In hindsight, I wished I had added the soil first and then did my trimming. The way I did it, the black liner ended up being just a bit short. I'll know better next time.

Just a quick side note on this great little tool. If you pot up lots of containers, a scoop like this makes the job so much easier! I picked my potting scoop at a local garden centre, but I notice that similar scoops are readily available online. 

Before I started, I watered everything and set the plants aside for a few minutes to drain.

As well as the herbs I had from the overgrown container, I bought a few ornamental cabbages, a bag of white pumpkins and two pots of sage from the local Farmer's Market. One was a golden sage (above on the left) and the other was tri-color sage (above on the right).

To hold the white pumpkin in place I attached a flower pic from the craft store. To do this I placed a generous dab of glue on the bottom centre of my white pumpkin and inserted flower pic into the hot glue. Then it was just a matter of holding the pic in place for a few seconds until the glue set.

Here's a full breakdown of what I used: 

1. One ornamental cabbage with a white centre 2. Tri-color Sage 3. Three grey ornamental cabbages with purple accents 4. Thyme 5. Oregano 6. Golden Sage 7. Variegated Lemon Thyme

A view of the far side of the basket.

Because I plan to use this as a table centre piece, I worked from both sides to put the basket together. No matter where your guests are sitting at the table, you want the basket to look good!

I don't know about you but, whenever I pot up something, I always get potting soil where I don't want it! To clean up my mess, I use a dollar store spray bottle filled with water and a piece of paper towel.

As a final touch, I added a little metal banner that is topped with a tiny bird. 

Here's the completed project. A similar basket or pot might even make a nice hostess gift.

Again, this isn't meant to be a longterm container planting. After the long weekend, I'll plant most of the herbs into the garden.

Sage

When I was finished the basket I still had some sage, rosemary, thyme and a couple of ornamental cabbages leftover, so I decided to use then to give one of the containers on the front porch a fall update.

Here's a full breakdown of what I used: 

1. Sage 2. Rosemary 3. Thyme 4. Oregano 5. Ivy 6. Variegated Lemon Thyme 7. Ornamental Cabbage

With the exception of the cabbages and the ivy, everything is a herb. Most herbs are pretty cold tolerant, so they work well in fall container plantings. (The ceramic pot is tall, so I thought the long trailing stems of the ivy would be a nice "spiller". There are also a few Dogwood branches at the back of the pot.)

The final touch was a little rusty birdhouse I picked up at a craft show for $5.

This little winged piggy greets all our visitors. In the fall, I put pumpkins or acorns in his outstretched arms. At Christmas time, it's usually pinecones.

If you're celebrating Thanksgiving this coming weekend, I hope you and your family 

have a lovely holiday!

Fall Container Update on a Budget

Most of my container plantings have gone the distance and are still looking good as we head into fall, but the concrete urn at the entrance to the back garden is in desperate need of an update. Back in June, the urn looked rather pretty. 

Filled with sweet potato vine, pansies and sky-blue lobelia it continued to look good well into July. Then the scorching heat and dry conditions began to take its toll. The pansies got leggy and thin despite regular deadheading and watering.

The lobelia however, managed to tough it out, and the sweet potato vine began to spill nicely over the edge of the urn. So here we are at the end of August: the front of the container still looks good, but the pansies definitely need to be replaced.

Though this part of southern Ontario has felt downright tropical this summer, the fact that this is Canada is foremost among my considerations. There are maybe four or six weeks before we get the first fall frost. Any annuals I may plant are bound to parish in the first real cold snap sometime in October. I refuse to spend a fortune to see me through a matter of a few weeks. A short season determines that this is going to be an container update on a limited budget!

Adding to this makeover challenge is the fact that the plants in the urn that survived are sky blue and lime green. Hardly the beginnings of a traditional fall color scheme! 

So I went looking for a little inspiration at a local nursery.

Who says a fall color scheme has to be orange, red and yellow anyway? This mauve and purple color scheme is really rather nice. 

The mums are familiar plant choice, but the ornamental peppers and the Celosia are a bit more novel. Celosia is a fairly versatile choice as it comes in a variety of red shades- everything from hot pink to lipstick red.

Celosia 'Dark Purple'

Celosia Intenz 'Lipstick' (on the left) and Celosia Intenz 'Classic' (on the right)

Even the ornamental peppers that come in an array of colors.

Sedum 'Neon'

Investing Longterm:

If you are tired of using Mums to make up your fall container plantings, Sedum might be a nice alternative. It is a bigger investment in the short term, but you can always lift the sedum from the container after the first frost, and plant it out in the garden, making it a good longterm investment.

As well as Sedum, there are a few other types of perennials that you can plant out in the garden once your fall container has done its job. For instance, Heuchera offers a wide selection cultivars that come in terrific fall colors.

Heuchera 'Marmalade' on the left and Heuchera 'Crimson Curls'

Heuchera even work in a less traditional mauve combination. 

Heuchera Dolce 'Blackcurrant' and Heuchera 'Berry Marmalade' 

Bring the Indoors Out:

As with the summer containers I featured recently, you can use houseplants outdoors to great effect in a fall scheme. This Croton (seen above) looks great paired with mums, tangerine colored pansies and a tall Cordyline.

Just remember that this is a "tropical" plant. If you plan to bring it inside for the winter, you need to keep an eye out for frost warnings and bring it indoors before it gets damaged by cold.

Fall containers for Shade:

There's no reason why you can't have a nice fall container planting even in the shade. Try a hosta (that you can plant out in the garden at the end of the gardening season) along with some cold tolerant pansies and a perennial Sedge (that you can also plant in the garden).

Not sure what the grass used here is. See the sedge reference below.

I have a number of Sedge Grasses in the shady areas of the garden. Some are even evergreen or semi-evergreen.  I picked this one up on clearance:

Carex morrowii, Laiche japonaise 'Ice Dance'

It is not as tall as a Fountain Grass might be, but this Variegated Japanese Sedge could easily work in a fall container. And it is happy in shade (unlike most ornamental grasses).

Variegated Japanese Sedge, Carex morrowii, Laiche japonaise 'Ice Dance' is a grass-like perennial that forms a low mound of tufted green leaves edged in white. It likes moist, rich soil, but most of the Sedges in my garden seem to do fine in somewhat drier conditions. It's evergreen in habit (in colder areas it may need to have any foliage scorched by cold trimmed off in the spring).  Height: 20-30 cm (8-12 inches), Spread: 30-45 cm (12-18 inches). USDA Zones: 5-9.

A few containers in my backyard.

If you have part-shade a mix of Coleus combined with Sweet Potato Vine might be another great option.

But I digress, back to my container in need of an update...

I am not always a great one for planning ahead, but this year I was smart. I bought a few small Coleus plants in the spring and have been nurturing them backstage, so they could step into a bigger role this fall.

So for a bit of fun, I cleaned away what was left of the pansies and placed two of my Coleus plants into the large urn just to see how they might look:

Option 1. Not bad!

I rather like the way the lime-green edge of this Coleus looks with the Sweet Potato Vine.

Option 2. Next, I tried out a pinker Coleus. It wasn't as big as the last Coleus, so I tucked a little Celosia down into the front of the urn. 

Again, not too shabby.

But what if you hadn't grow any Coleus this summer like I did? I really wanted to come up with a last minute budget option that anyone could use to makeover a summer container. 

So I bought 4 plants.

These were 3 for $10.

I also splurged on a Red Fountain Grass (annual here) that was $6.99. Here is how they all fit in to my urn:

Once I had my placement done, I removed everything from its pot and planted them into the urn. 

I placed the fountain grass just slightly off-centre. I squeezed one of the cabbages down into the front and fit the other into a gap toward the back. The Celosia fit nicely in between the two cabbages.

I felt my rusty robin didn't fit in with the Coleus, but I think he works well with the softer Fountain Grass.

(You can find these rusty birds here in the GTA at Terra Nursery or at the Toronto Botanical Garden's shop. Here is an online source: Rusty Birds)

So which was your favourite version of my fall urn update? 

Should I have stuck with one of the Coleus?

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And thanks for sharing!