We were glad to hear recently from a reader who found useful
examples in What's Coming Up 165, "Cutting
Holiday Greens."
Here's a 1-2-3, A-B-C explanation of those
examples, plus some additional ideas for arranging evergreen boughs
and other material from your garden.
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Cut some greens, follow this guide and make your doorway
distinctive this winter.
Here's a 1-2-3 example...
...using cuttings gathered as we closed up a garden.
There are two armloads of greens spread on the lawn: A dark
green Bosnian pine (Pinus leucodermis), light green
arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), silvery bluestar juniper
(Juniperus squamata), and crabapple branches with
persistent, marble-sized red fruit.
Right: First, we set height and
width.
Below: Second, we added a red
complement.
Right: Third, we filled.
Below: A little accent goes a long way. After putting a bit
of red into the arrangement on the left, we decided to match it by
using red paint to highlight the neighboring arrangement's dry bush
clover stalks (Lespedeza thunbergii).
Below: One spruce top* for height, several arborvitae tops*
fanned around the spruce for width, and then some red-painted cones
from Japanese white pine (Pinus parviflora). All greens
are from the previous day's pruning
to keep a spruce small and to prevent snow splay by eliminating the
multiple leaders in an arborvitae hedge.
About
that pruning: Can you tell the five foot spruce top above was
just removed from the Koster dwarf blue spruce at right? It's true.
Fifteen minutes before this photo was taken, this spruce was five
feet taller.
To see how we did it, check out our demonstrations of keeping
spruce small in Reduce a Spruce.
As for limiting arborvitaes to one leader, Sponsor us,
please, to help us post these No Splay Arbs and other
arb-clipping photos plus their supporting details.
Thanks to our Sponsor, Elly Sullivan:
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