Holly berries and cheery red Poinsettias combine to make Christmas gatherings festive. Your home will glow with the joy that these plants add, and they are quick and inexpensive decorative touches.

As the holly groweth green and never changeth hue, so I am, ever hath been unto my lady true.
—Green Groweth the Holly by Henry VIII (1491-1547)

A living Holly bush, or freshly cut branches laden with red berries, adds a classic Christmas note to your home. You can buy them in small pots, some with plastic red berries attached. Last year my dad sent my family a living Holly bush, which spent most of the succeeding year still in its pot, on our patio. This Christmas I will bring it in for table display, and then plant it outside.

There are 400 Holly species worldwide, with English and American species popular in American gardens. Hollies can be as small as six inches tall and spreading, and as tall as seventy foot specimen trees. Hollies are embraced as privacy fences, clipped hedges, planted along house foundations, and as tall, handsome garden specimen trees.

American Hollies are Ilex opaca and English Hollies are Ilex aquifolium. In Europe and in Western Asia these plants have long been part of religious ceremonies, including the use of holly water to bless new born babies, in the pre-Christian era.

For most Hollies, only the female plant provides berries, with flowers in late spring to early summer and red berries from autumn to March, which birds including Robins, Cedar Waxwings, Cardinals, and Goldfinches love to eat. To optimize berry production plant a female and a male Holly within 40 feet of each other. Holly grows best in sun, and will grow in shade, but will provide many more berries in full sun.

An excellent Holly to plant is Satyr Hill (Ilex opaca), winner of the 2003 Holly of the Year, with large dark olive green leaves and bright red berries that last all winter to provide help for songbirds. The finest fruiting Holly is Old Heavy Berry (Ilex opaca), which grows 30 to 40 feet tall, and has masses of brick red pea sized berries. For a Holly that grows in conical form to ten feet tall and is densely berried, plant Red Beauty. All grow in Zones 5-9.

Poinsettias

Poinsettia plants of red, white, pink, speckled, and even yellow, are available to brighten any room in your house. One vibrant red plant, or a cluster of colors, is a focal point to lift spirits of everyone who sees them. These beauties are originally from Mexico and Central America, and today, more than 60,000,000 Poinsettia plants are sold in the United States each year.

The Poinsettia legend in Mexico dates back several centuries, to a Christmas Eve when a little girl named Pepita had no gift to take to church to give in honor of the Christ child. While praying she was directed to pick some weeds growing along the road, and when she approached the church altar, the weeds blossomed into glowing red Poinsettia flowers, which gained the popular name of Flores de Noche Buena or Flowers of the Holy Night.

Called Poinsettias today, they are named for the first United States Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett. A plant enthusiast, in 1828 he found a bright red Poinsettia growing along a road in Mexico, and sent cuttings from that plant to his greenhouse in South Carolina.

Poinsettia flowers are technically bracts, with the flowers being the yellow centers. When you select Poinsettia plants, avoid plants that are drooping and soil that is bone dry or waterlogged. When you get your plants home, find a place for them with indirect light for at least six hours a day, and water only when the soil feels dry. Their ideal temperature is 68 to 70 degrees, so when you are comfortable so are your Poinsettias.

Copyright © by Terra Hangen Share