Late winter and early spring are good times to prune trees and shrubs - photo by Larisa Larisa
January and February is usually garden cleanup time around my house. When the foliage is gone from woody plants, I can see their structure better and I can tell what wayward branches need to be lopped away.
This is also when the plants are dormant, so I know that cutting them back won’t harm them. Although I could bag up all those loose trimmings, I don’t see a need to fill up my local landfill. Not when I can make great garden accents for my container garden. With a little ingenuity, I can come up with several container gardening ideas for decorating with sticks.
Long before there were big-box home stores, Europeans and Native Americans alike used whatever available materials that they had on hand in their gardens for support and ornamentation. Springy young twigs would be bent and shaped to make structures for homes as well as fencing.
Container Garden Ideas
For small pots, you can create wigwam-type structures using short, bendy sticks. You can even soak branches that will not bend easily to make them more pliant.
Sturdy, thick sticks make an ideal trellis for larger planters or vegetable planters. Twining vines such as pea plants, bean plants and morning glories will wrap around these trellises and grow upward toward light.
Garden Accents
Wattle Fencing makes an inexpensive homemade garden accent. Photo by Petr Kratochvil
You don’t need to garden in the ground to use wattle fencing as a decorative accent. Instead you can create mini-fences in log planters and window boxes to give the effect of having a cottage garden. Or you can cluster several planters together and hide the pots behind a wattle fence enclosure. This works particularly well if your pots are unattractive.
Also, you can create a raised bed or a small planter by enclosing an area with wattle fencing, then filling the inside with potting soil or lasagna style mulch.
If you are proficient with weaving, you can create your own pots by making baskets. You can also twist branches into structures that resemble rustic bee skips, wreaths or spheres. This becomes easier if you use floral wire to help hold bent sticks in place
Twigs for Container Gardening
Although you can use any tree or shrub sticks in decoration, here is a list of twig types that I think work best for container accents.
Pussy willow trees have decorative catkins in spring. - Photo by Chris Ford
Willow – Willow tree branches are naturally springy and have an interesting gnarled and twisted shape. If you use pussy willow twigs, they may already have catkins growing on them. These make a nice visual addition to your twig structure. Just be wary about inserting willow branches into potting soil. Willow contains Salix, which promotes rooting in plants. I’ve previously written about making rooting hormone using willow bark.
Dogwood – Various types of dogwood have red or yellow bark. Using Redtwig dogwood or yellow twig dogwood will create accents that contrast nicely with your containers.
Birch – Birch twigs have a naturally straight form with wispy branches. The tree bark is typically white. Once you cut a birch twig, it will dry naturally and appear fresh for many years.
Boxwood – During Christmas, boxwood trimmings make great decorations for wreaths. Although the evergreen trimmings will eventually wilt, they will last longer than most other trimmings. You can also create instant topiaries by twisting the boxwood into wire forms.
Nandina – these evergreen shrubs resemble bamboo, with upright sticks and branching leaves. The leaves turn bright red in fall and produce red berries in winter. If the foliage is still red when you trim these plants back you will be able to incorporate that into your decorating. Nandina sticks are not flexible, so they make better trellises than other decorations.
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