There aren’t many things that I love more than heading outside to clip something interesting from our garden or property to use as home decor. Here are my top ten plants for home decor!
If you’re looking to make a home decor investment this spring that you’ll be able to make use of for years and years, might I suggest looking outside your home first? I find myself constantly amazed by what I’m able to find outside on our property to bring inside throughout the year, even in the dead of winter. Our gardens are by no means extensively planted yet, but there are still so many great plants that help to beautify both the exterior and the interior of our home. I’m constantly clipping a little of this and a little of that to see what will work in a vase in our home to bring a little added life to our rooms. I thought it would be fun to share some of my favourite plants to grow that I’ve discovered so far that work really well as home decor as well!
I’m sharing this post today for this month’s edition of the Thrifty Style Team, since you can’t get much thriftier than free flowers clipped from your yard! Thanks so much to Julie from Redhead Can Decorate for organizing our group again this month! Here are my favourite garden plants for home decor!
Hydrangeas
Beautiful fresh in the summer, dried and preserved in the fall, or brown and crispy in the dead of winter! You can find my tips for emergency first aid for hydrangeas here if you’re currently trying to grow some hydrangeas and not having the best of luck.
Forsythia
These super quick growers are great for their bright yellow flowers in early spring, but I love to clip their really straight branches in the early-leaf stage as well for a bit of springy green.
Boxwood
Boxwood clippings make great greenery any time of year because they hold their color for months even after drying out, as long as you keep them out of direct sunlight. Here’s how to make your own boxwood wreath.
Maples
Obviously maple leaves are great to decorate with in the fall, but I’m particularly fond of their spring time blooms. We have bright red blooming branches in late March here from our black maples and cheerful bright green blooms from our Norway maples in early May.
Alliums
These globe-like flowers are absolute show-stoppers any time of year. I love their bright purple blooms in garden in the summer, but I might like the dried version even better throughout the rest of the year.
Peonies
The classic flowers that everyone loves and waits for every spring. They’re so easy to grow and they’re definitely worth the wait, even if their blooms are very short-lived. Here’s how to make peony blooms last up to a month. For the record, the foliage they provide in the garden during the rest of the summer is beautiful and interesting and I even love to clip a few stems of just the leaves to bring inside.
Lilacs
We have a huge old-fashioned lilac tree that grows next to our house, as well as a dwarf variety that blooms twice in the late spring. The wide-spread growing habit of the branches are great to force for a little greenery in the early spring, and the blossoms are obviously just amazing while they last.
Hostas
This one is probably a little weird, but I’ve been clipping hosta leaves to bring inside for about ten years. They suddenly take on a really fun, tropical vibe when you clip a few leaves and place them in a vase of water. They also last about three weeks, so they’re a great, low-maintenance summer decor plant.
Bonus: Monstera
A Monstera plant is really more of a houseplant than a garden plant, but its leaves work really beautifully in vases. I have a big plant that I’ve been clipping leaves from and it just keeps putting out more! The great thing is that if you leave them in water long enough, the leaves will start to root and then you’ll have even more plants!
What plants in your garden do you love to take clippings from to add to your decor in the house?
Make sure you get the chance to visit all the other Thrifty Style Team members as well to see their ideas for this month!
DIY Beautify
2 Bees In A Pod
Jennifer Rizzo
Postcards From The Ridge
The Creek Line House
The How To Home
The Painted Hinge
The Tattered Pew
Unskinny Boppy
Sweet Pea
What Meegan Makes
Salvaged Living
I Should Be Mopping The Floor
Cottage At The Crossroads
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- How to Grow Boxwoods
- How to Rescue a Completely Overgrown Garden
- How to Fix Leggy Petunias
- Top Ten Easiest Plants to Grow in Your Garden
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.