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Halloween

Some Celts wore ghoulish costumes so that wandering spirits would mistake them for one of their own and leave them alone.

Others offered sweets to the spirits to appease them. Halloween pumpkins, or jack-o’-lanterns come from the beggars who went from door to door asking for food in return for a prayer for the dead,” and they would carry “hollowed-out turnip lanterns, whose candle connoted a soul trapped in purgatory.” Others say that the lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits. Now pumpkins are used as they are easier to hollow out.

Using pumpkins, squash, gourds and ornamental kale are a great way to decorate the porch to your home. Halloween offers an endless choice of autumn colours where the results can be fabulous. Create a spooky graveyard with creatures “of the night” enticing trick or treaters with their surprises. For business owners, spiders and their webs that scale your entire building will entice customers to your premises.

Christmas

A time for brightly twinkling is an opportunity for a little extra illumination in the form of Christmas lighting. From simple strands of tiny white LED Christmas lighting or vintage-style, multi-coloured oversized bulbs, Mushrif Central Parks can create the ideal seasonal lighting design for special events and to your taste.

With the right outdoor landscaping, your Christmas decoration can be as simple as a holly wreath on the front door. Christmas holly is a classic in holiday displays and well maintained holly bushes flanking the front door create a festive mood with their bright red berries. Holly bushes are not just good at Christmas, the evergreen foliage offers visual interest all year round.

The planting of creeping junipers offer tidy ground cover and are a good practical choice if you need to control soil erosion on a hillside. A Moonshadow euonymus can add a splash of gold for added effect. All of these can grow over time, contributing to a larger display in the years to come, or for commercial purposes, can be installed in established sizes to make an immediate impact.

Easter

Most people have heard of a Christmas tree, an evergreen. Fewer have heard of an Easter tree made from flowering branches from something like a forsythia.

On these hang homemade blown and dyed eggs that can be added to over the years, much like home-made clay ornaments made by children for the Christmas tree. Use any flowering spring branches, hanging the eggs in the garden if you wish. This is a decoration full of spring life. It is also possible to use flowering forsythia, quince, dogwood, cherry, or apple branches dangling with glowing colourful eggs.

Other suggestions are to add small wicker baskets of plants in strategic locations throughout the landscape to create a fun Easter theme, mixing foliage, flowers, eggs, and small rabbit figurines. Plants can be kept in pots and arranged in the baskets, with voids filled with moss or burlap.

For something more durable, a metal basket makes an excellent, long-lasting planter or use a rusted old wire-framed hanging basket as a planter, removing the chains and letting it rest on the ground. You can include shrubs in planters and when they get too big, transfer them to the garden.

Valentine’s day

There are some Valentine’s gifts that will never go out of style.

Ones that remind you how much you are loved. Flowers are definitely one of those gifts. Roses smell and look beautiful and are a reminder of the person who gave them to you. Sadly, they’re usually dead within a few days, even though extremely expensive around February 14.

The solution is a potted plant or flower for Valentine’s Day. There are so many options that there is sure to be a perfect match for your beloved. Whether you choose a traditional rose or something more unusual like a red hibiscus or a modern take would be herbs such as lavender, basil, thyme or many others. Succulents are good for those who like low maintenance, or perhaps a lemon tree would be something you know they would appreciate.

The beauty of potted plants and flowers outside of their form, colour and aroma is that after Valentine’s Day is over, and Winter fades into Spring, these plants can continue to be enjoyed as plants on a patio or mixed in with the landscape flowerbeds where you can watch them grow year after year.