Want easy spring decor? Bring the outdoors in!

Just got home from the grocery store, and couldn’t help noticing how many people were buying potted spring plants for indoor decor! Now that the bulbs are blooming and branches are blossoming, it’s a perfect time to forage in your yard or garden. Just grab a pair of pruners or scissors and let that frustrated artist out to play!

  Here, I just mimicked what I always see in the Pottery Barn catalogs – a long, arching flowering branch (here I used forsythia) in a clean-lined contemporary vase. (Tip: for longer-lasting blooms on woody stems, smash the bottom of the stems with a hammer or meat mallet. This increases the surface area of the woody fibers and allows them to take up more water).

Pussy willows can look downlight wintery if put in a heavy ceramic vase in an earthy color. Instead, lighten up the look with a vintage-style bottle tinted a robin’s egg blue. When choosing vases or containers for spring floral designs, I always keep in mind the advice of Charles Arena (of Arena’s Florist, here in Rochester, NY): use clear glass or shiny, cool-hued metal (like the silver of a garden tea party set or the galvanized metal of watering cans). Pussy willows, by the way, can be put in a vase without water to keep their furry, silvery buds just the way they are, or you can put them in water and watch their green leaves sprout.

Spring bulbs (like these purple-blue hyacinths) often look great in a low, chunky vase like this one, with a few pebbles on the bottom you can just pick up in the yard. A minimal look is key:  Trim off all leaves and just leave the stem, and cut the stem so the bloom just peeks over the top edge of the container. (You can even put them within a taller vase so they can be viewed through the glass).

Here’s another flowering branch – of the beautiful, white, flowering magnolia ‘Royal Star’ – in that same tall, clean-lined contemporary vase I used for the forsythia. I love the Asian/Zen flair of this design – maybe it’s because the organic architecture of branches is something celebrated in the Japanese art of bonsai (training small trees and shrubs in pots) and ikebana (Japanese flower arranging).

Another cool look Charles Arena taught me is to create a terrarium or miniature landscape within an apothecary jar (like the ones you’d find in old-time drug or candy stores – with knobbed glass lids on them). Here, I just lined the bottom with moss I found in a shady area (it lifts right off, like a little rug), then added some stones and some lilac buds and a sprig of creeping juniper). I love terrariums … they sort of recapture the Victorian era’s "Wardian cases" full of miniature plantscapes. Click here to learn more about (or buy) terrariums or replicas of Wardian cases.

Here are those magnolias again – this time in a galvanized can embellished with spring touches like raised designs of butterflies and a coat of pastel-pink, distressed paint.

And this time in a shiny cool-hued, galvanized metal watering can.

Here’s another trick: Do a series. Here, I just stuck the hyacinths in three juice glasses with a sprig each of inkberry from the bushes out front. See? You don’t need fancy vases - or even fancy plants. Just using a grouping of the same or similar items (usually odd numbers like three, five, seven or more) can make a stylish statement – and boost your mood!

For more pictures of my easy floral designs, go to my Flickr account. I sure had fun putting all of these together! What do YOU do with spring flowers, blooming branches and foliage? Post a comment and tell me about it!

See you here next time on Your Easy Garden by Tesselaar!