Quick Winter Container Recipes: Spontaneous Plant Combinations for Your Outdoor Containers on the Porch
In the colder months, gardens may seem dormant, but with a little creativity, you can bring life and colour to your outdoor spaces with winter container gardens. The thriller, filler, spiller design principle is a simple and effective approach for creating visually appealing and seasonally extended container arrangements.
A thriller is the centerpiece of your winter container, acting as the eye-catching focal point. Ornamental grasses, such as *Cordyline*, or architectural plants like *Cordyline*, make excellent choices for their height and structure. For a more festive feel, ornamental kale or cabbage can also serve as a foliage thriller.
Fillers are mounding plants that fill the space around the thriller, providing colour and texture. Suitable winter fillers include snapdragons, Spanish lavender (*Lavandula stoechas*), and hardy ornamental grasses. These plants create fullness and add visual interest.
Spillers are trailing plants that cascade over the container edges, softening the boundary. Sweet potato vine (*Ipomoea batatas*), *Bacopa*, or *Vinca* are winter-appropriate spillers that add flow and visual interest to the arrangement.
By choosing plants that tolerate cooler temperatures and have lasting foliage or blooms, such as evergreens for thrillers, hardy fillers like lavender, and resilient spillers like *Vinca*, you can extend the display beyond the festive season.
The versatility of this composition method allows for easy swapping if a plant fails. Simply remove it and replace it with another compatible species to refresh the look without starting over.
For those seeking a winter herb garden, herbs like rosemary, hardy in zones 8 through 10, and sage, hardy in zones 4 through 10, can be incorporated as thrillers. Creeping thyme, hardy in zone 2, is an ideal herbal spiller with a low, spreading growth habit.
In addition to the traditional winter container plants, you can find a variety of evergreens and hardy plants suitable for your hardiness zone on various platforms, such as the Blue Star juniper, a low-growing variety of Creeping Juniper, available in the platform Shop.
Don't forget about adding flowers to your winter containers! Pansies are among the few flowers that bloom readily in cooler weather and can be used to fill spaces.
Lastly, winter containers can boost curb appeal despite the dormant season of many gardens. To stay informed about gardening tips, videos, and a free e-book on how to grow delicious tomatoes, consider signing up for the platform newsletter.
[1] Source: Gardening Know How (
A home-and-garden lifestyle enthusiast could consider incorporating winter container plants, such as ornamental kale, snapdragons, and sweet potato vine, following the thriller, filler, spiller design principle to bring life and colour to their outdoor spaces during cold months. By choosing suitable plants like evergreens and hardy herbs for thrillers, resilient fillers, and winter-appropriate spillers, one can extend the display beyond the festive season and boost their garden's curb appeal even during dormant times.
