Outdoor Christmas Decorating
by Jan Cashman

Jerry and I love to drive by lavishly decorated and lit yards during the Christmas season and admire the effort and spirit of our neighbors. Some of us don’t have the time or budget to decorate to those extremes, but still want to show we’re in the holiday spirit. Here are some simple ideas using natural items to decorate your outdoor spaces:

Natural evergreen wreaths, big or small, are a staple on or near your front door. Simple evergreen wreaths can be embellished in many ways. For different textures, add sprigs of juniper and pine. Blue-gray colored juniper twigs with berries contrast nicely with the wreath’s green boughs. Then, add pheasant feathers, pinecones, dried flowers, and rose hips. Rose hips are a great local substitute for holly. Use florist wire to secure the pinecones and hot glue on the contrasting boughs and dried flowers. Martha Stewart, on a recent morning show, added feathers to her wreaths, along with dried leaves. She gilded them first with gold spray paint and combined them with wheat or dried grass sprigs, also gilded. Red bows are traditional, but I love the beautiful sage green velvet bows Martha was using.

Garland, to frame your door, around a post, or to set off your railing, gives your entryway that traditional holiday look. Embellish your garland, similar to embellishing a wreath, with juniper and pine boughs and rose hips. Put bows at the top of every loop of the garland, if you like.

Don’t leave those clay pots that held annuals all summer empty this winter. If the pot is empty of soil, a dwarf Alberta spruce or another potted evergreen can be inserted to give you instant greenery. The compact pyramidal shape and bright green color of the dwarf Alberta spruce is perfect for pots next to your front door. White mini lights, and even ornaments, can be hung on this outdoor tree for the Christmas season. Remember, though, that putting a live tree in an unprotected pot for the winter is a risk, especially if it is a tender variety. The tree will have a better chance of survival if it is not in direct sunlight, but the roots will still be above ground and exposed to extreme winter temperatures.

If you have left the soil in your flower pots, try pushing small, cut Christmas trees into the soil. More than one tree gives the pot a fuller look. Or use a mixture of evergreen and red twig dogwood branches in your pots. Look for other items from your back yard such as golden willow twigs, juniper and arborvitae greens, rose hips, ornamental grasses, and pine cones, to add to the arrangement. Large sugar pine cones look more to scale in an extra big pot. You will have to buy them—sugar pines are not found growing here.

Hanging baskets from last summer don’t need to sit empty during the winter either. Fill them with a mixture of pinecones and evergreens drooping over the edge. Fasten on a simple bow.

Because of the long nights this time of the year, lights are an important part of your outdoor Christmas decorating. Customers plan ahead for Christmas by planting a spruce or pine in a crucial spot in their front yard or near their front door, ready for lights in December. The traditional, large, colored bulbs for outside are still commonly used for decorating. There are newer outdoor lighting options like lanterns, hurricanes, flameless candles, and more. Smith and Hawken is showing oversized outdoor balls and shaped ornaments, lighted from the inside, in their catalog. The traditional white mini-lights can decorate a tree in your yard in many ways—draped loosely is one option, but I like them wrapped around individual branches of a deciduous tree, although that does take a lot of time and lights. Jeff Pfeil, Bozeman Tree Service owner, warns that the common icicle lights often blow into gutters, resulting in extra maintenance; and if one of their little lights burns out, the whole strand goes.

Jeff told me that the latest thing in Christmas lighting is LED lights (Light Emitting Diodes). These lights can look the same as traditional Christmas lights, but consume 80-90% less electricity and last longer. You may be able to exchange the bulbs in your old strand of lights for LED bulbs. There are LED candle window lights available in line that run on a battery, are inexpensive, and turn on and off automatically on a sensor. Jeff said, with the LED lights, the homeowner no longer needs to worry about overloading a circuit.

After Christmas, you can modify your outdoor decorations for the rest of the winter. I remove the red bow from my wreath by our front door and leave it up for a few more weeks. Remove the lights and ornaments from trees and boughs in your flower pots, but leave the greenery. Make your hanging baskets into winter bird feeders by filling them with millet spikes and sunflower seeds.

Most of us want make our outdoor spaces look festive in the holiday and winter seasons. Even in cold weather, we can enhance the beauty of these outdoor spaces--using items we find in our own backyard.