Creating a festive holiday window box is a good way to get outside for your garden therapy even as the mercury drops and the snow falls. If you have a box planter and some fresh greenery you will quickly have a long-lasting planter to freshen up the outdoors. And you don’t even need a window for this window box display! You can set it anywhere that could use some sprucing up, like a bench, porch, deck railing, or even indoors on the fireplace mantle.

We had our first snowfall in 1,000 days here in Vancouver and it’s been mighty cold (for us thin-skinned west coasters)! Even so, I spent those chilly days outside enjoying the falling snow. I rushed out to protect some of my tender plants and pots, and drain my fountain (oops!), when I was caught by the beauty all around me. The holly berries were glistening with balls of ice and everything was dusted with pretty white fluff. Of course, there was snow-people making, snow angels, and even a snow castle—1000 days is a long time between snowfalls—and then I collected some greenery to decorate the outdoors for the holidays.

Holiday Window Box Planter Recipe

While out in my winter garden, under the snow is a whole bunch of beauty that I just had to clip. I’ll share my recipe for this window box planter and you can follow it or forage for your own greens. The key is to follow the three elements of beautiful container design: spillers, fillers, and thrillers.

Want to change up the recipe? Here are more ideas for how to use garden greenery in holiday decorating.

Make it!
Your window box only needs bit of soil to hold the greenery in, but there is no need to buy anything special. The greenery won’t be growing, you just need it to stay in place for the holidays so any old soil with do. I used an old coconut fiber basket liner and root-filled soil as my base.

Start the design by choosing greens that cascade over the edge of the box. Press the stems into the soil around the front and sides. I used clippings from my Christmas tree to get the base that I wanted.

Next, fill in the center of the planter with a different texture of greenery. As I used needle-leaf greens for the spillers, I chose broad-leaf evergreens for the fillers: laurel and holly. Don’t the berries on the holly look gorgeous! I love the pop of red. Then, add some thrill with the magnolia for height and interest.

Add pinecones, ornaments, ribbon, or whatever you have to personalize the planter and give it a special touch. I like to wire up pinecones so they stand up in the design. You can see how to wire pinecones or even how to make pinecone spheres.

I don’t have any window boxes, but I wanted to dress up the front bench for Christmas. Nobody will be sitting on it for a few months so it may as well get a little festive!