National Poinsettia Day is fast approaching — Dec. 12 to be exact. While I am sure the powers that be wanted a celebratory day, from what I have been seeing this year is that this may be a deadline day. Have your poinsettias by Dec. 12 or you may not get any. This most likely applies to poinsettia partners, too! If you are asking what a poinsettia partner is, then put on your thinking cap and gather 'round.
Proven Winners got most of us thinking about partners when they introduced the concept of combining poinsettias with Diamond Frost euphorbias. This is one of the best ideas ever, and we now actually have three choices: Diamond Frost, Diamond Snow with double flowers, and Diamond Mountain, the tallest of the three.
To a horticulturist like myself, this combination is so special because both the Poinsettia and the Diamond Frost are euphorbias. That’s right, they are cousins. Just like at Christmas, families visit and long-lost cousins get together. Of course, the main reason we like this idea is that the red, pink or variegated poinsettia looks incredible. It’s as though it is sitting on a bed of snow or frost. I have found these to be more available at fine florists.
But if you are going to create your own and go plant shopping, then keep in mind some other options you might want to try. For instance, a couple of years ago, Jenny Simpson of Creekside Nursery in Dallas, North Carolina, introduced us to not only using caladiums at Christmas, but even in combinations with poinsettias. She used the Heart to Heart White Snowdrift caladiums, which turned out to be a perfect partner with red poinsettias.
My time as executive director at the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens in Savannah, Georgia, taught me opportunities for outside use with poinsettias, particularly if you are astute at long-range weather forecasting. Consider that Savannah is technically zone 8B with a proclivity to lean into zone 9. We used poinsettias in large planters surrounded by Silver Bullet Dusty Miller, or artemisia.
A similar application gave me the opportunity of photographing pink poinsettias mass-planted in an atrium-like setting and surrounded by gray-leaved Icicles Helichrysum. But if you are getting a late start, the most obvious and perhaps easiest is to combine your poinsettias with another Christmas plant like cyclamen. White cyclamen around a red poinsettia can be simply breathtaking.
This year I have also been watching what I call the professional garden club ladies walking out of both florists and floral departments with holly berries. We all think of hollies on swags above the fireplace or front door, but two or three preserved branches loaded with red berries stuck in a pot of white poinsettias is quick, easy and unbeatable.
Red berries for Christmas, landscape beauty, and of course feeding the birds is a prime reason to grow winterberry hollies like the compact Berry Poppins. Consider also growing Berry Heavy Gold winterberry holly. Cutting branches of the gold berries combined with red poinsettias makes a stunning partnership (for more information, search online for Proven Winners' Ultimate Guide to Winterberry Holly). If you don’t have poinsettias yet, make today your shopping day!
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(Norman Winter, horticulturist, garden speaker and author of “Tough-as-Nails Flowers for the South” and “Captivating Combinations: Color and Style in the Garden.” Follow him on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy.)
(NOTE TO EDITORS: Norman Winter receives complimentary plants to review from the companies he covers.)
