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One of the time honored rituals of the is decorating the lawn and garden with lights and ornaments to display to the rest of the neighborhood. Of course this means finding places to hang lights and lawn ornaments. One of the best places to display Christmas lights are on shrubs and bushes that are scattered throughout the landscape.

Shrubs and bushes also make excellent decorations themselves, as there are many shrubs and bushes that will produce red berries during the Christmas holiday season. For the most part, though, the lush greenery of shrubs and bushes will likely be the only color available in your Christmas landscape. As well, many of these Christmas shrubs and bushes can be sniped with pruning shears and used as indoor holiday decorations. However you plan to use Christmas shrubs and bushes, they can add beauty to any holiday display.

Of course the most popular choice for Christmas shrubs and bushes are evergreens. Although many novice gardeners believe that the broad category of evergreen is the actual name of the shrub or bush, it is simply a category of shrubs. These are needle-bearing shrubs that can easily be trimmed into beautiful shapes, depending on where they are planted in the landscape. One of the best parts about Christmas shrub evergreens is that many produce a wonderful scent that will add to the beauty of the season.

Evergreen Shrub Choices

There are endless numbers of evergreen shrubs and bushes available that will make any Christmas landscape beautiful. A popular christmas shrub is the holly bush. There are several different species of the holly shrub, although one of their most popular features is that they produce beautiful red berries in the fall and in the winter. These berries are a wonderful way to attract wildlife during the Christmas holiday, as well as a great way to add to the natural color of your Christmas lawn and garden display. Holly can also be cut and brought indoors to add to your interior Christmas display.

Yew bushes are another excellent Christmas shrub choice. There are two main species of the Yew bush, the Japanese Yew and the English Yew, as well as hybrids of both available. Although you might not recognize the name Yew, you would most likely recognize the plant if you saw it, as it is one of the most popular landscape evergreen shrubs. This is because the Yew bush is especially easy to trim and fit into any landscape design. Although the Yew does not produce any flowers or berries, its dark evergreen colored foliage makes a great addition to any Christmas landscape and the sturdiness and compactness of the shrub makes it great for decorating with lights.

The Alpine Currant is an excellent and hardy Christmas time shrub. It is a compact bush that would be wonderful for decorating and also produces flowers in the late spring and early summer months, as well as red berries during the fall and winter months.

Other Excellent Choices

Another excellent choice for Christmas shrubs and bushes is anything in the Dogwood shrub family. While the name Dogwood is synonymous with the tree Dogwood, there aremany beautiful Dogwood shrubs as well. Look for Dogwoods with names like Artic Fire, Coral Red or even the Redosier Dogwood. These Dogwoods will actually produce red branches and stems during the winter months. This is a wonderful way to add color to the exterior Christmas lawn and garden display. Instead of red berries, many of the Dogwoods will produce white berries, which add a beautiful contrast to the red stems.

Keep in mind that there are endless shrubs and trees that can be added to the landscape to help create beauty during Christmas time. If you are looking for a specific type or style of plant, ask a lawn and garden specialist who can help find something that blends well with the landscape you already have established.

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Gardening Question of the Day for Monday, November 20, 2006
19 Nov 2006 at 11:00pm
Can you suggest a homemade spray for controlling aphids? (answer).

From The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Gardening Question of the Day for Sunday, November 19, 2006
18 Nov 2006 at 11:00pm
When's the best time to divide hostas? (answer).

From The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Although Thanksgiving has become a time to share a meal with family members and watch sporting events on television, it was originally a time to celebrate the harvest season. This meant enjoying the fruits of labor from an entire season of growing and caring for vegetable plants. Enjoying that season now might mean acquiring vegetables from a garden that has been growing all season, but it can also mean using those natural resources to make your home and lawn more festive during the Thanksgiving holiday.

One of the most popular and well-known ways to decorate for Thanksgiving from your garden is to spend the summer and early fall months planting and growing vine vegetables like pumpkins, gourds or squash. There are a variety of different sizes of pumpkins, from large vine pumpkins to mini pumpkins, as well as bush and semi-bush varieties.

In order for Thanksgiving pumpkins, gourds and squash to make it to harvest right before the November holiday, gardeners should wait to plant them until the end of June or the beginning of July. Pumpkins, squash and gourds are great in combination for displays on the lawn, front steps, or surrounding the driveway, as well as in the house on counters, coffee tables or as a centerpiece.

Decorating with Cornstalks

Another great way to make [Thanksgiving decorations] from your garden is to use cornstalks that would otherwise be chopped down. The brown cornstalks are a reminder of the reason for Thanksgiving and are also a great way to decorate a lamppost or post that supports an awning in the front yard. These can easily be tied with twine that was used earlier in the season for staking tomatoes. Keep in mind that if you want to consider using cornstalks for your Thanksgiving display, you should leave them in the ground as long as possible. This will slow down the decomposing process.

Depending on your climate zone, you may be able to use actual corn as part of your Thanksgiving display. Of course the tradition is to display Indian corn, but any type of corn husks you still have remaining in your garden will work. Corn husks work well displayed in combination with gourds or pumpkins or even in a cornucopia.

While vegetables usually dominate the Thanksgiving decorations in many homes, fruit was actually an important part of the original harvest season as well. If you are a gardener who has an orchard or grows fruit plants, display these during the Thanksgiving season as well. Fruit works great in a cornucopia or also in a simple fruit bowl on the counter. It can also be placed on a hay stack in the garden outside of the house in replacement of annuals that have died. Excellent fruit choices are grapes, apples, oranges, or even pears. Remember that fruit decomposes more quickly than vegetables so should only be placed out for decoration a short time before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Put those tree leaves to use

Although leaves don’t come from your garden, they are a fall gardening item that will need to be picked up and removed from the yard and from the garden beds during the fall months. So, why not use these beautiful fall colored leaves to display as Thanksgiving decoration?

They can be gathered up to place on top of a hay stack or around a lamp post that has a cornstalk tied to it. Fall colored leaves also work great for indoor Thanksgiving displays, although leaves will begin to decompose more quickly with the warm indoor temperatures. If you want to keep fall leaves indoors for longer, try pressing them in wax paper and cutting around the edges of the leaf. From here they can be placed on counter tops, hung on the walls or even used in Thanksgiving craft projects.

There are endless natural ways to add color and life to your Thanksgiving decorations. The beauty of the Thanksgiving holiday is to enjoy the harvest season, and nothing goes better with that than decorations from our natural surroundings.