15 Easy Thanksgiving Container Designs Anyone Can Put Together
Welcome the harvest season and Thanksgiving parties with nearly effortless potted arrangements. With simple, abundant designs, we’ll celebrate autumn’s casual beauty and harvest offerings. Join gardening expert Katherine Rowe for fall inspiration in easy style.
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Fall is meant for relaxing into the season, from enjoying time outside to plentiful harvests and time shared. To highlight the experience, seasonal container displays bring autumn to our doorstep and tabletop.
With bounty from the garden and harvest, Thanksgiving is easy to adorn. Simple mixes from the local nursery and grower’s market and dried grasses, seeds, and flowers from the landscape make it a carefree occasion to celebrate naturally.
From fall bloomers to interesting foliage plants and seasonal embellishments, go for a cool season refresh. Here, we bring inspiration for unfussy container designs within reach.
Simple Fall Ensemble
Sometimes, a single specimen is all you need to highlight the season. A simple mum in a container is an autumnal hallmark. It’s also an easy display to pull off.
Place a potted nursery mum into a pretty pot, and voila, instant fall. Add gourds and miniature pumpkins to the base for a detailed finish.
However, to move beyond the standard chrysanthemum, consider an heirloom variety. These unique bloomers bring diverse flowers and perennialize well for years of recurrent color.
Bright Tones and Textures
Bold and bright in complementary (opposite) color tones, this composition exudes energy and vibrance. Using only a few plant varieties, the key lies in abundant blooms and varying forms.
This arrangement works at any scale, even in small planters. Use a formula of a central evergreen surrounded by blooming annuals that fill and spill. Give it some height for added dimension. Frost-tolerant, cold-hardy selections ensure a long-lasting display.
Here, a golden false cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera) drapes among trailing pansies. Look for ‘Cool Wave’ or ‘Freefall’ pansies for a full, cascading effect of delicate blossoms that spill over the edges. Euphorbia offers a spray of chartreuse flowers for height and texture. A tall sedum in flower also works well.
Edible Beauty
The harvest season is perfect for celebrating edible vegetables by featuring them in pots. Blend them among other ornamentals for a well-rounded display. Use them on their own for a container you can pull from for the Thanksgiving feast. Mix and match leafy greens with edible flowers for a gorgeous look that also makes a lovely garnish.
Edible greens with high ornamental value:
- Swiss chard (‘Bright Lights,’ ‘Celebration,’ and ‘Ruby’ have soft, shiny, dark green leaves with brightly colored stems)
- Red-veined sorrel
- Redbor kale
- Giant red mustard
- Parsley
Edible fall flowers:
- Pansies and violas
- Nasturtium
- Calendula
- Snapdragons
- Marigolds
Bold Eclectic
Big on color, this combination offers the look of fall in velvety purple and scarlet. It provides a collection of autumnal flowers and showy ornamentals.
Celosia brings fuzzy spikes that stand out among ornamental cabbage and ornamental peppers. Ruby mums fill up the base, and pale pansies and violas spill.
To get a bold look, consider:
- Celosia ‘Atomic Purple,’ amaranth, or ornamental millet for colorful plumes and seedheads
- Ornamental cabbage, ‘Osaka Red’ or ‘ColorUp Purple’
- Heirloom hardy garden mums like Chrysanthemum ‘Seaton’s Ruby’
- Ornamental peppers like ‘Black Pearl’ or ‘Candlelight’
Succulent Pumpkin Pots
Pumpkins make the perfect vessels to highlight seasonal specialties. Top them with succulents, fill them with fresh and dried florals, or petite potted mums (to make mumkins). The ‘Cinderella’ pumpkin featured here (the 1880s French heirloom ‘Vif d’Étampes’) is a beautiful classic. The red-orange cucurbit is large, round, and squat. It inspired Cinderella’s coach in the beloved fairytale and it’s also quite fitting an accent on its own.
To create a succulent pumpkin pot:
- Start with a flat-topped selection and spray the top with adhesive. Apply dry sphagnum moss.
- Nestle in succulent cuttings and adhere them with clear glue, hot glue, and floral pins.
- Mist the arrangement occasionally to prolong its life and nourish any new roots. Keep it out of direct sunlight.
- When the pumpkin declines, remove the succulents and transplant them to pots for continued growth. You can also cut off the top and nestle the whole thing in a well-draining potting mix. The pumpkin “lid” will naturally break down, and succulents should root.
For fresh florals:
- Carve out the center of the pumpkin. Place floral foam or a water-filled jar inside to support an arrangement of seasonal blooms and greenery.
- Use dried materials like hydrangea blooms, twigs, leaves, and exciting seedpods from the garden.
For a mumkin:
- Carve out the interior and drill one or two holes in the base for easy drainage.
- Place a fitting potted mum in the interior.
- Soften edges with moss or dried leaves.
Natural Build
Tha garden has many gifts to offer at Thanksgiving. Look for unique twigs, logs, leaves, seedheads, and natural elements to incorporate into the container arrangement.
Here, the cut logs add heft and seasonal texture to flowering heath tucked into pots. Simple greenery (variegated ivy and silvery dichondra) softens the look and adds highlights. An array of squash anchors the look for a true autumn feel. Wooden crates and terra cotta echo the rustic, natural materials.
An easy way to incorporate twigs and leaves is to bring height to containers. Use thin branches with colorful foliage intact, or attach leaves and other dried material to twigs and arrange them vertically.
Unexpected Colors
A November aesthetic isn’t limited to deep orange, gold, purple, and garnet. Bright pastels, like pinks and yellows, with silvery foliage give a sweet holiday welcome.
Pastel mums contrast deep celosia. Ivy softens the base as a trailer, and licorice plant brings sprays of silvery sprigs.
Fresh Herbs
No Thanksgiving feast would be complete without fall herbs, and they’re ideal as container accents. A grouping of herbs is lovely and functional. Combine them in a single planter or cluster individual pots of different sizes.
Rosemary provides a strong upright form or a trailing feature, depending on the variety. Sage, whether silvery, gold, or tricolor, adds velvety texture. Thyme brings little leaves and oregano a fine texture. Chives have frost-tolerant blades and mint refreshes in bright green. These perennials (depending on your climate zone) last well beyond the season.
Easy Cool Mix
Arranging cool season annuals from the local garden center is as easy as can be. Many cool season bloomers are available in prearranged mixes to effortlessly combine colors. Cold-hardy annuals have a long show of color, withstanding frost and blooming all winter in mild climates.
Dark purple and gold are always a winning combination. As opposite colors, they provide rich contrast. Here, dusty miller lends a fuzzy, feathery texture in silver while white snapdragons add height. Ornamental cabbage and kale also make excellent “filler” pieces in like tones.
Just Add Squash
There’s no such thing as too many cucurbits when it comes to autumnal aesthetics. Pumpkins, gourds, and other squashes reflect the long-awaited harvest. From green to orange to peach to white, smooth or warty, round or long-necked, the offerings are boundless and go together seamlessly.
If you have a window box or railing planter, fill it lengthwise, stacking varying pumpkins and their relatives. Add a central specimen, like a sizable ornamental kale, to break up the combination.
Any planter, even small ones, looks great filled with the showy fruits. However, it’s important to vary their sizes, colors, and textures for a full look.
Pumpkins work even without a pot. Stack a few, largest to smallest, for a handsome column of cucurbits flanking the front door or porch steps.
Stacked Pansies and Violas
Unique pot configurations add visual interest and, in the case of stacked containers, vertical dimension. Tiered pansies and violas bring abundant, nonstop flowers for a lush, vibrant fountain of color.
Employ a blend of your favorite shades and mixes. Cool blues provide lovely neutrals to repeat in the composition as a unifying force.
To achieve a neatly stacked look:
- Choose pots with the same or similar shape in two or three descending sizes. A bowl is an attractive form.
- Place a broad, stable pot upside down in the base container. This becomes the riser to support the upper tier. A short stack of bricks works, too. The riser should be nearly the same depth as the pot so it’s concealed when planting.
- Fill the surrounding area with soil and bedding plants. Place the upper container and repeat the process.
Marigold Feature
Marigolds have cheery pom pon blooms in sunny yellow, gold, ivory, and garnet. The frill of petals contrasts handsomely with their feathery, deep green or purple foliage. In full bloom, they bring a burst of color, whether situated outside or brought indoors to add to the Thanksgiving festivities.
Here, colorful ceramic pots add to the aesthetic of full-grown Tagetes. The duo enhances the feature of a single specimen in a streamlined way.
Marigolds are a signature of autumnal displays, but they don’t withstand heavy frost. Replicate the look by repeating singular, hardy bloomers if your containers experience heavy freezes before the holiday.
Nestle
Tucking potted plants into a container of choice is an easy alternative to direct-planting seasonal growers. For an instant display, nestle them into a basket, wooden crate, galvanized bucket, antique watering can, wooden trough – anything that meets your style. Keep them in their nursery pots for easy watering. Use moss or natural leaves to conceal the individual pots.
This is a handy trick for enjoying outdoor annuals inside during the holiday before planting them outside. It’s also helpful for short-lived bloomers that aren’t frost-hardy. Fall-blooming cyclamen can live indoors until temperatures warm in the spring.
Portable versions make sweet gifts for the Thanksgiving host.
Evergreen Anchor
A structural evergreen is versatile year-round for anchoring an arrangement. It can stand alone or provide vertical and textural interest among seasonal foliage and flowers. Change out the annuals according to the time of year to refresh the design.
This lemon cypress adds columnar interest to a foundation of colorful foliage. Ornamental kale and deep purple grasses bring contrast.
The best container evergreen specimens include:
- Dwarf cypress
- Boxwood
- Dwarf holly
- Camellia
- Spirals and topiaries
Cabbage Maximalist
This layered display brings out all things fall and a sense of tropical lushness. Large ornamental cabbage flanks the combination of dense leaves and annual flowers.
Golden creeping jenny spills over the rim while peachy pink snapdragons and scarlet mums add fill. Blue mealy salvia (Salvia farinacea) provides delicate purple-blue spikes.
The mirrored pair here features slight variations for a balanced asymmetry, using the sizable cabbages and trailing creeping jenny to ground the look. Repeating specimens or colors helps a mix-and-match appear cohesive.
