Did Someone Say Sparkly, Spray Painted Coneflower Seed Heads?
“The only way I’m going to win a Gold Glove is with a can of spray paint.”~ Reggie Jackson
I love holiday decorations. I have boxes and boxes in the basement. It takes me a week to get everything just right (and that’s not including the tree…). I like to think of myself as Martha Stewart meets Clark Griswold (character from my most favorite Christmas movie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – love it…watch it every year, at least once!). This holiday season, when so many are having to cut back, is the right time to teach all you gardeners out there how to stretch your decorating dollars and do the holidays right, with spray paint and sparkles.
No dime store decorations here, we’re talking pure class! Besides…everyone needs a little sparkle in their life.
Martha does decorating with money. We’re going to do decorating for just about nothing – except the cost of some paint and a tin of sparkly, fairy dust. You wouldn’t believe the treasures you can find in a roadside ditch that will make your holidays sparkle and shine.
My last year as Supervisory Horticulturist at the U.S. National Arboretum was a fun-filled year. There was a lot going on. We were tasked with coming up with low cost holiday (weren’t allowed to say Christmas or any other holiday by name in the Federal Government) decorations. My assistant at the time, Bradley Evans and I decided we could make an entire holiday display out of things we found in the collections at the arboretum.
Boy did we! It was fabulous.
We also asked each collection to decorate a live tree or a wreath with things they found in their collection. The holly collection had life easy with all those shiny greens and colorful berries. It was hard for some collections – like the Azalea collection – not much going on this time of year in an azalea collection, but they did a smash-up job.
Bradley and I made the most amazing wreaths. We used all natural things collected from the garden, some floral wire and a dash of paint and sparkle where necessary. Take this wreath made from hardy orange (Poncirus trifoliata) and southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) leaves. Bradley painted the hardy orange branches with their wicked thorns metallic gold. While he was hanging it, I kept hearing these “mwa-ha-ha” like noises. He enjoyed constructing this wreath-o-pain. It was totally and utterly wicked. We had to make sure this one didn’t fall and impale a visitor.
There was also the wreath I made from magnolia branches (Magnolia soulangiana) with their fuzzy, pussy willow-like buds and the amazingly colored Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) fruits. I threw some Spanish moss on this one and spray painted some cinnamon fern seed heads metallic gold. There were also some pine cones too. Osage orange are such a cool color to begin with, but my-oh-my – last year I painted some metallic silver, dusted them with red sparkles and wired them to a wreath. They were fantastic, for sure!!!
I have to say, my favorite wreath was the one Bradley and I made from dried gourds form The National Herb Garden that we spray painted multiple shades of blue and accented with the lime green Osage orange fruits. I called this one the Squidward wreath (those of you who watch Spongebob Square Pants know what I mean). The wreath base for this was an old wire tree basket that came with one of the balled and burlapped trees we planted in The Flowering Tree Walk that fall.
What a way to reuse materials, eh? The center flower was a dried cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) that was spray-painted baby blue and dipped in fairy dust.
Can you say, “To die for!”?
I’m not sure everyone at the Arboretum appreciated our holiday style.
Osage oranges are totally cool and most people throw this funky, wrinkled lime green fruit away. You can find them in roadside ditches along country roads and in older urban neighborhoods. When you do pick them up, make sure they are firm because a rotting Osage orange isn’t a good smell. There’s some great history behind their use as hedges in the Great Plains.
The name comes from the Osage tribe, which lived near the home range of the tree, and the aroma of the fruit after it is ripe. (Find one of the fruit that has been sitting in the sun on a balmy Indian summer day and notice the pleasant, orange-peel smell of the skin.) The Osages were considered a Siouan people, semi-nomadic in nature and recorded mainly throughout the Missouri and Arkansas area. Not all of the trees will have fruit because Osage orange are either male or female, and only the females will bear fruit.
Before the invention of barbed wire in the 1880′s, many thousands of miles of hedge were constructed by planting young Osage orange trees closely together in a line. The saplings were aggressively pruned to promote bushy growth. The hedges needed to be tall enough that a horse would not jump it, stout enough that a bull would not push through it and woven so tightly that even a hog could not find its way through! After barbed wire made hedge fences obsolete, the trees still found use as a source of unbeatable fence posts.
Other materials that make really cool holiday decorations include: dried coneflower (Echinacea sp.) heads, red twigged dogwood (Cornus sericea) branches, winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata and serrata) berries, seed pods from Kentucky coffee trees (Gymnocladus dioicus), seed pods of sweet gum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua), seed pods from southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora), the zig-zaggy branches from redbuds (Cersis Canadensis), lavender and rosemary branches (especially since they are all evergreen), and many more…be creative and make your garden work for you.
Plants Nouveau has tested coneflower heads for strength (as it pertains to holiday decorations). I suggest using a sticky hairspray once you select your seed head, this way the seed will stay in place longer. In my trial garden, Echinacea ‘Avalanche’, ‘Milkshake’, ‘Hot Papaya’, and ‘Coconut Lime’ are the sturdiest of our Cone-fections series. They all have seed heads held high atop strong, thick stems. Plain old Echinacea purpurea works well too, especially the large headed selections. I find they hold up well in wreaths and indoor arrangements.
If natural colors are not your thing, make them even more fabulous with spray paint and sparkles. There is no voc (volatile organic compounds) spray paint available now from Krylon. It’s called H2O latex. I warn you, you must follow the temperature rules (above 50 degrees Fahrenheit) or it might peel before the holidays (speaking from experience).
I prefer metallic gold, silver or red paints because green does not show up too well on the dark seed heads. I really adore the clear, iridescent sparkles because they make everything look frosted.
I use the plastic tubs of sparkle dust with shaker tops that you can find at any craft store. A little goes a long way and make sure you sprinkle right after painting or use some non-toxic spray glue before sprinkling on the sparkles, if you don’t want to paint. I use the 3M Super 77 low voc spray glue. I would also suggest sprinkling over a pan to catch the ones that don’t stick. You can reuse those! The plants pictured in the photo are blazing star (Liatris spicata) with red paint and clear sparkles and Avalanche coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘Avalanche’) painted both metallic silver and gold with the same sprinkles.
Hopefully, this gave you some tips and really inexpensive ideas to make your holidays sparkle. This article is reason enough not to cut back your perennial borders until spring. Use the seed heads for decorations and leave the rest to feed the wildlife. We all need a break from gardening this time of year anyway. Just get the wet leaves away from your dry soil loving plants, like coneflowers. Wet leaves and a long, wet winter make for dead coneflowers in the spring.
Everybody could use a little sparkle in their life this year, right?
Until next week…
Happy Weeding.
Angela Treadwell Palmer
President, Plants Nouveau
P.S. Today, while I was driving to the craft store for my yearly supply of paint and sprinkles, I scored big time! I found a ton of Osage orange fruits along the road in an older urban neighborhood. Passers-by thought I was crazy, picking up those sticky, ugly fruits. This year, I think I’ll paint them red and frost them with the iridescent sparkle flakes. I’ll use a heavy weight nail attached to floral wire to attach them to my wreath. I can’t wait!