Must-Have Holiday Plants

More For Your Plants

Evergreens: Scrape a fingernail-sized patch of bark off the bottom of a low branch of camellia, daphne, mahonia, rhododendron, or rosemary, dust the wound with rooting hormone, and put a brick on it to hold the branch in firm contact with the soil below. The branch will root where it hits the ground; cut it free from the mother plant in a year and replant it wherever you want.

Christmas Greens: When snipping branches for swags and wreaths, follow standard pruning principles: Make each cut just above a side branch, thinning the tree or shrub evenly as you work. While you're at it, remove dead, diseased, and injured branches; to finish the job, prune for shape.