Forget the Christmas Tree, Here’s the Ultimate Guide to Holiday Decorating with Houseplants

If there’s one place I like to lose track of time in, especially around the holidays, it’s any of the four locations of Los Angeles-based nursery and home decor mecca Rolling Greens. Every nook, shelf, tabletop, and beautiful basket is brimming with stunning decor and pottery begging to come home with you. Shopping spree aside, what I might love even more than filling my cart with new beautiful pieces is the inspiration I get from how perfectly the creative team integrates the nursery’s plant offerings into the mix. They curate a botanically filled wonderland that evokes a polished yet casual sense of style that further convinces us that houseplants are indeed an integral part of interior design.

Thomas J. Story

While pines are a seasonal staple, many of us wonder if it’s possible to style our existing collection of potted pretties to lean into more merriment for the holidays. While tying a bow around any ceramic pot is a great place to start, Rolling Greens co-founder Greg Salmeri and creative director Raychel Walton have quite a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to combining festive with fronds. Here, they share their retail design secrets, masterful styling prowess, and genius use of greenery that’s sure to have us all decking the halls with houseplant happiness this season.

Festive Foliage

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We’re always looking for new ways to restyle and revive a space with existing plants, and the holidays are no exception. The Rolling Greens team suggests adding varieties into the mix, such as Sunset Leucadendron, staghorn ferns, pink fittonia, plectranthus platinum, acacia, and begonias, which offer sage or rosy hues that aren’t on-the-nose-holiday. 

When arranging groupings of pottery and plant material, remember to use odd numbers and different heights to make an interesting statement.

Unexpected Evergreens

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Completely forgoing the traditional Christmas tree might be a no-go for most, but there are many other pine alternatives to consider showcasing during the season. Try incorporating rosemary, olive, lemon cypress, or lavender topiaries into your designs. Rolling Green’s favorites include potted cypress, boxwood or topiaries, especially when lit with a string of lights for an elevated entryway. Styling any of these in aged or vintage terra-cotta is a great way to pop the plant material, particularly when adding topdressings like Spanish moss or jade-colored rocks to enhance the look. Additionally, succulents are an easy-to-care-for plant that creates a more architectural look. Succulents aren’t just for pots! Use them to add interest to garlands and wreaths. The Rolling Greens team likes to complement freshly cut succulents with faux staghorn fern and faux Dallas fern for a surprising and long-lasting mix.

Shelfie Spotlight

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No mantel, no problem! Bookshelves and tiered nooks also make for happy holiday moments. If they’re not positioned in the room as your main focal point, the team at Rolling Greens suggests not overdoing it. Instead, keep it stylish and simple while allowing for negative space and highlighting each piece as a beautiful little spotlight all on its own. When adding botanicals to the mix, choose complementary containers that are more visually interesting than the plants, especially if framing your scene with garland. The team encourages you to continue creativity on these boughs and choose unexpected pieces or objects to add to your garland, such as naturally shed antlers, faux berries and fruit, live eucalyptus, dried palm fronds, or assorted sizes of pinecones. If using ornaments, opt for colored translucent glass ornaments, which accent the decor while reflecting any lighting.

Faux and Fabulous

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‘Tis the season to relieve faux plants of their bad reputation. Yes, they’re perfect for spaces with low light, but they can also be incorporated anywhere in your home. With so many more options for real-looking botanicals on the market, think of artificial greenery no differently than you would your ornaments and other holiday decor, which can be carefully packed away and reused each holiday season. The key to a lifelike faux planting or tree is the manipulation of the leaves and stems to emulate the true growth pattern of living plants. Topdressing is also important, so treat your faux features like the real deal and add moss or beautiful pebbles to their containers.

When it comes to selecting the right kind of faux plants, the Rolling Greens team suggests stylish staples, such as garlands, pine branches, succulents in deeper reds and purples, wreaths, staghorns, and gilded leaves or berries. Look for details in stem texture, leaf color, and plant growth patterns to ensure the best selection. To style, faux plants should always remain in the background, providing a great base structure from which to build your design that you can use year after year. If weaving in live material, be sure to give those plants center stage, and don’t forget to spritz weekly so that it doesn’t dry out.

Enchanted Entertaining

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Taking tablescaping to the next level, the team at Rolling Greens integrates plants plate-side with an incredible living runner planted directly into the center of the wood slab. This stunning spread showcases perfect plant styling and uses a mix of leaf sizes and form to thoughtfully achieve playful texture and elegance. Here, the team used a combination of maidenhair fern, staghorn fern, trailing rosemary, Dallas fern, variegated ivy, blue star fern, hoya Hindu rope, and picea glauca.

Want to recreate this look using potted plants? The team suggests taking multiple pots of varying sizes, starting with the largest centerpiece in the middle. Design arrangements in low trough-style vessels and place them along the center of the table, adding garland, branches, moss, or rocks to help disguise the vessel edges. For extra drama, try hanging moss balls and oversized kokedamas (Japanese moss-wrapped plants) accented with tillandsia and purple-hued succulents for an unexpected aerial arrangement. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the creative minds behind Rolling Greens, it’s that there are no rules and no green thumbs needed this holiday, just a bit of imagination and a playful love of plants.

Styling Tips

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Start with these styling suggestions when treating houseplants like holiday decor:

• Identify the areas in your space that you would love to dress up with holiday decor.
• Keep in mind that this decor is temporary, which gives you license to incorporate whimsy and your over-the-top ideas because it’s only there for a few weeks.
• When choosing plants, make sure they accent the colors in your decor.
• Select containers that disappear into the background so that the focus stays on the decor and plant material.
• Remember the five senses and try to incorporate them into your designs. This will create an immersive experience for you and your guests!
• Need a place to start? Try adding a beautiful velvet ribbon bow tied around the container, or arrange ornaments, small pinecones, or gilded leaves and branches into the container and plant branches.