Turn a Garden Box Planter into a Beautiful Holiday Table Arrangement.

 

 

My cousin Frank and my neighbor (crafty Jane) were married this last weekend and it was such a wonderful celebration!  I have shared projects in the past on the blog from cousin Frank and crafty Jane and it’s been a dream come true to see these two meet, fall in love and  get married over the last two years.  Congratulations Jane and Frank!!

Sunday afternoon, Jane and Frank delivered this fabulous long wooden garden box that Jane and her parents made for the wedding.  They made at least 15-20 of these flower filled boxes for the tables for the reception, which looked breathtaking mixed with the linens and table decor.  I was just thrilled to be given one of the boxes:

 

 

I have seen these long wooden garden boxes/planters similar to this at Home Depot and Lowe’s but of course none are as pretty as these that Jane and her parents made.  Jane’s parents told me that they were super easy to make and they are made just like they appear:

 

 

they simply cut a large rectangular base to the size they wanted and then cut and nailed all of the side pieces together on top of the base.  Then they stained them.  The best part of all, they lined the inside of the box with super heavy duty plastic:

 

 

As I looked at the box and the beautiful wine colored arrangements that they also gave me, it hit me that I could use this box all year on my dining room table.  When I looked inside the box and saw how they tilted plants and used mason jars for flowers, I came up with a little plan for my fall/holiday table inspired by Jane and Frank’s gorgeous wedding color palette.  This centerpiece could be made large and tall like mine or small and simple, depending on what you need for your table.  I have such tall ceilings in my dining room, so I needed something with a lot of height. Plus I live in Texas, we love us some big flower arrangements!

So I got started with my plan by covering the box with a sheet of green moss that I picked up at Hobby Lobby that I just cut to fit the sides and tacked on with Tacky putty:

 

 

 

As I looked through the box to see how they did the flowers, I was surprised to see that most of what they had in the box were plants in their containers. How smart!! These are plants like asparagus ferns, kale and flowering plants that are really inexpensive but will last months if kept watered.

I also noticed that they had several little mason jars stuffed with wet floral foam that they just slipped in the fresh flowers. The floral foam also helped keep the flowers in position. This gave me the idea to place a large mason jar filled with water in the center of the box and fill with a few of the fresh flowers from an arrangement that they gave me as well to give my arrangement the height that I needed:

 

 

I also realized that I had tons of beautiful trees in my backyard that had green and purple berries that would be great to cut and fill in my arrangement as well.  I got to thinking that if I just switched out my fresh flowers every so often (I didn’t use much) and also switched out my branches and kept the plant containers watered regularly, I could make this arrangement last through fall and maybe even Christmas!  I can also easily remove the large mason jar and flowers during dinner time so we can see each other (it’s pretty tall!).

I purposefully only worked on one side of the arrangement first so I could show you a picture of how everything looks once I was done in the box itself.  One of the tricks that they used is that they angled the plants so the box looked fuller:

 

 

 

You can also see in the above picture the small mason jar with wet floral foam in it.  I also added two candlesticks, so that I could add candles at the end:

 

 

Also above you can see that I added even more height by stacking plant containers on top of plant containers.

 

 

It looks like a really expensive arrangement but when it comes down to it, it’s only about six containers of various plants and flowering plants, one fresh arrangement (a grocery store arrangement would work and spread out among the jars ) and branches and filler cut from trees in my yard.  I also added two candlesticks and as you’ll see in a minute, I added some faux stems as well.  So all in all, this is not that expensive to do at all and everything except the fresh flowers should last through the holiday season.  All I will have to do is switch out the flowers and branches every so often.

So this is what the arrangement looked like after I got it on my table, added the candles and fluffed with pine cones and some faux stems:

 

 

 

Here’s a close up so you can how everything is positioned:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am so excited about my arrangement and I would have never played with this had it not been for having a supply of gorgeous flowers and this awesome wooden box.  I will have a lot of fun with these to come!  Again, mine is a little over the top as far as height but I just couldn’t stop.  It just looks like wild fall to me.

Thanks for hanging out with me today friends!  I’ll be back on Friday!

Cheers!

Cyndy