With Designs by Steph Green of Contained Creations
With a few simple updates, the evergreen shrubs that shine in your containers all year long can take on a festive new look for the holidays! Just ask Steph Green, the design maven behind Contained Creations, whose beautifully curated container designs have graced Southern Living Magazine, The Spruce, and more. After crafting an elegant “modern homestead” palette of planter designs for the 2025 Southern Living® Idea House in Keswick, Virginia, Steph revisited this year’s container designs to give them a charming winter refresh. Drawing inspiration from designer Charlotte Moss, she brought the design team’s rustic-refined holiday interiors into the landscape, creating an inviting holiday container roster that’s ready for company, carolers, or whoever else might arrive at your doorstep this December! (Looking at you, Santa!)
Here are three holiday container designs from the 2025 Southern Living Idea House, complete with tips, tricks, and plant combinations you can recreate at home:
Woodland Welcome Camellia Containers
Flanking the front doors of the Idea House, a pair of oversized wooden box planters is anchored by stately October Magic® Ivory™ Camellia and ‘Soft Caress’ Mahonia evergreen shrubs, accented with climbing asparagus fern. Faux berries and red apples, plus large sugar pine cones, give holiday flair that can be seen from afar.
“In keeping with the modern homestead theme, the idea was very natural with just subtle nods to winter red,” Steph explains. “Lots of pine cones, simple greenery, and nothing that felt overdone.”
Scale was critical here. At nearly two feet across, these are the largest planters on the property, so they called for equally bold accents. “The bigger the pot, the bigger your accents should be. Loblolly pinecones were not going to cut it for a container of this size, so we opted for sugar pine cones,” she says.
Design takeaway: Match the scale of your plants and accents to the size of your container, and rely on winter-blooming beauties like camellia and mahonia to add cool-season interest.
Winter White and Evergreen Urns
At the foot of the front entry steps, a pair of fluted urns echoes the camellias on the porch while adding new interest with its own distinct plant combination. These containers lean into an elegant white-and-green palette using October Magic® Ivory™ Camellia as the evergreen “thriller,” surrounded by a low ring of EverColor® ‘Everest’ Carex, pansies, and ornamental cabbage.
The color subtleties of this palette were intentional. “I wanted this pair of urns to complement the front door planters without competing,” Steph notes. “From a distance, white actually adds depth to green, so we maintain strong visual interest without creating a feeling of business or clutter.”
This design uses a technique called skirting, where lower-growing plants ring the base of a taller focal plant. Because winter growth is slow, these smaller container plants stay small throughout the holiday season, unlike warm-weather containers that can grow wild and unruly by the end of the season.
Design tip: Don’t be afraid to go big – really big! In fact, from the lip of the pot to the topmost branch of the container’s tallest plant, the height should be equal to the height of the vessel. In this case, bigger is better. Steph adds: “That’s how you avoid a ‘skimpy look’ in your containers.”
A Textural Trio Filled With Holiday Cheer
On the dining porch, three containers work together as a coordinated trio. The first container has Bigfoot™ Cleyera as its star, ringed by EverColor® ‘Everest’ Carex, pansies, and cabbage as seasonal accents that can withstand winter’s chilly temperatures. The second container highlights Roman Candle® Podocarpus with ornamental kale, dwarf mondo grass, pinecones, and berries. The final member of the trio is the petite Mini Touch™ Holly, with decadent foliage and a rich, dense form that makes it more than worthy of a solo planting.
“When I design winter containers, I always start with the big stuff,” Steph says, making reference to the stately evergreen shrubs that center this trio. She then considers texture: the ways in which a shrub’s foliage creates dynamic interest through density, shape, movement, and finish. The glossy and architectural foliage of Bigfoot™ Cleyera contrasts with the dense, fine texture of Mini Touch™ Holly in this trio, but their similar foliage color creates consistency that’s pleasing to the eye. Because of this consistency, the variegated Roman Candle® Podocarpus has the leeway to shine as the most expressive container of the group.
When crafting the podocarpus combination, Steph adds: “Because Roman Candle Podocarpus is visually quite dynamic, it calls for something simpler at its base,” she adds. Hearty green kale and mondo grass provide structure and a little softness over the pot’s edge, allowing the cones and berries to become the festive focal point.
Design tip: Repetition across containers creates harmony, while variation in texture keeps things visually engaging.
Steph’s ornate containers from the Southern Living Idea House show that the winter plant palette is anything but sleepy: the right plants shine in the coldest months of the year! With an evergreen plant palette, intentional scale, and naturalistic holiday accents, you can truly deck the pots and bring Southern Living style to your porch and planters this holiday season.
