Poinsettias with Holiday Sparkle

Adding a few items can turn your poinsettia gift from ho-hum to wow! This segment gives tips on how to create a basket full of holiday sparkle, and another example shows a more natural approach. Both are easy-to-make for a gift that lasts long after the holidays.

Produced by the Department of Communications at Kansas State University. For more information, visit our website at:
http://www.kansasgreenyards.org

Transcript:
Poinsettias with Holiday Sparkle

This is an example of how to get holiday sparkle into your gift plant. We’re using a poinsettia here. It’s a nice pink, popular color. We’ve added a trendy, high design, lime green effect, which is full of holiday sparkle and glitter. We’ve added a satin, gold, foil type bow. And then we’ve provided some color contrast with the white cyclamen, to the pink and green. It’s very nicely done with a tall, gold stick to give it some vertical height.

Then, if you want to stay in a more natural approach, we might look at something like this planter. We’ve used a variegated flower, which is red and cream-colored. We’ve paired that with a variegated leaf holly. It has a green and white variegation and the red berry. So we have red and cream, green and cream, plus the red. We’ve added a little euphorbia, Diamond Frost, to have something similar to a baby’s breath. It has a light, airy aspect to it. So, we have lots of contrast here, and yet its very natural looking. We haven’t gone to the holiday glitter style. It’s a color combination provided by the natural color and texture – all the way to the Norfolk Island pine houseplant here in the back.

Here we have another nice, natural combination. It has a Christmas-red poinsettia in the center, a nice bow, and a round bowl shape with a lower height basket to showcase this wonderful combination.

Let me show you how simple this is to do it yourself. The houseplant type foliage plants that are in here for contrast with the poinsettia are just set into a pot. The basket is lined with a plastic bag, and there are a few peanuts in the bottom to get the height adjusted. So, we just start by placing these pots side by side in here, with the poinsettia right in the center. Then, we’ll add this plant around the bow. And then we have the red and green Christmas type bow with a gold foil edge.

The plants vary from light green to dark green, to the red poinsettia. This makes a wonderful combination planter for Christmas. And if we were to give this as a gift, they’ll have the poinsettia to enjoy for the holidays. It should stay in bloom for at least two months – at least into late February. And then they would have all these houseplants that they can take out and put into larger pots to distribute around the house.

If we have a larger space that we’d like to fill, such as a gift basket to a business, we can go to a larger basket. Baskets with handles are very nice, it makes it easier to transport. We just simply use larger plant sizes. These are four to six-inch pots where the others were three to four inch diameter pots. So, we have poinsettias, button ferns, and a variegated poinsettia on the back side. We also have a peace lily, which is certainly a nice name for this time of year. You can add a little contrast with a white cyclamen, and we’ve put some holly with some berries and some mixed green into the basket. It’s a nice assortment for the holidays. But again, its something you can do yourself, because these are just pots set into a basket.

Now, to hide the space between the pots, we’ve used Spanish moss. You can see a little here. It’s just set in to fill around and hide the pots for a finished, decorative touch.

This feature story prepared with Alan Stevens, retired Kansas State University Research and Extension State Leader, Horticulture. For more information, visit your local county extension office or visit our website at KansasGreenYards.org.