Think beyond flowers: anything from your garden can make great indoor decorations this fall. Shutterstock/elle1973
For me, one of the main benefits of planting a garden is bringing garden-grown items into your home as decor. We also return loot when we find something interesting.
We have friends who do not bring flowers or other plant materials into the house. They say flowers lose their petals and look dirty, but in their natural environment they are even more beautiful. Each of us has our own uniqueness, but I always enjoy the beauty that surrounds me and spend most of my time indoors, especially now that the days are shorter and the temperatures are dropping. For me, vacuuming up leaves, seeds or petals is a small price to pay.
While flowers may be difficult to find in a Maine garden this time of year, other items, especially from the garden, can make up for the shortage. If you haven't carved all your pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, pumpkins are in keeping with the season and the mood, at least until Thanksgiving. Create a blend with other winter squash, zucchini, apples, nuts and maybe even garlic.
But don't give up on flowering plants. Many of them will look beautiful once the new delicate flowers appear. Hydrangea flowers dry naturally on the branches and add attractive color to fall and early winter decorations. Astilbe flowers also dry out and turn light brown or tan. He is attractive from the inside out.
My wife, Nancy, brought some actea (formerly black cohosh) flowers to use as seeds. With long, sturdy stems and seed heads that look like little dots on top, they add a textural element to your design.
Almost all ornamental grasses reach their peak of attractiveness late in the season. Native canes have beautiful seed heads that move gracefully with the breeze outside and even the gentle movement of air from a heat pump or the hiss of a door opening or closing. Miscanthus grass, although not native to Maine, can also be huge and attractive. Bunting is shorter but has attractive seed heads that remind me of a small fern, while Nancy's has tubercles.
Many people place foliage on tables to match floral arrangements or table designs. When you do, you'll be able to enjoy the same vibrant colors that attract thousands of tourists to Maine each fall, but from the comfort of your own home. If you want to use maple or birch leaves, you'll have to work to ensure they don't curl or wrinkle as they dry; Use wax paper and a low-heat iron to seal the sheets between two pieces of wax paper. Nancy says she remembers doing this in Girl Scouts.
The branches are also attractive. I'm not talking about the evergreens that dominate Christmas decorations. In the fall, try branches of different colors, such as red dogwood or white birch. They look beautiful and can be placed in the center of an arrangement, supporting dried flowers, ornamental grasses and more. Twisted branches from Harry Loder's walking stick also make excellent anchors.
Bark is a nice touch for interior design, but make sure it can be found without removing it from a living tree . (Trees need bark to prevent pests and infections and to regulate nutrients and moisture.) Use any bark you can find as a backdrop for small arrangements of dried flowers or alone. Birch is a favorite in our house.
Mulberry is an excellent choice for interior decoration. My favorite is the winterberry, a native plant that can be found and cut along country roads this time of year if you get the owner's permission. We have viburnum which produces good berries and holly would be good too, but I think it is too closely associated with Christmas to use it too early.
Bittersweet and multiflora roses also have attractive berries, but they are very invasive and I think are best left on display. Outdoors, animals and birds can spread seeds and therefore invasive plants. And indoors, you can safely display them if you throw your food scraps in the trash to burn them rather than compost them. But in reality, the negatives of surgical procedures far outweigh the positives, so it's best to avoid them completely, both internally and externally. However, with the exception of these invasive plants, the design rule is simple. If you find something attractive in your garden, it will likely look good indoors.
This year Nancy tried something new. Due to a very rainy year, he discovered that there were a lot of wonderful mushrooms growing in our garden. He collected many of them in the hope of organizing an exhibition. Unfortunately, some collapse as soon as you touch them, and most do not stand up on their own. Hopefully some of them will be dry enough, but even if they aren't, we have plenty of walnuts to add to our table.
Tom Atwell is a freelance gardening writer based in Cape Elizabeth. He can be reached at tomatwell@me.com.
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