what to do when dead plants in urns just aren’t working for me

By:

Liz Jenkins

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So I’m doing a staging at a vacant house last fall and the client had left two really nice urns on the front entry.  Unfortunately, she left two very dead plants in them as well.  The realtor had scheduled a realtor tour that afternoon and I’d stopped by to do some fluffing up of stuff when I noticed the dead plants. 

What to do??

My solution:  I had twigs in my car, and a christmas wreath I’d been strong armed into purchasing from my daughter’s school.  And a casserole dish.  So I ditched the dead plants and took my casserole dish to the construction site next door.  I started digging in a pile of dirt and gravel to fill these urns in which I placed the twigs.  Once I’d filled them, I dismantled the wreath with my pliers and laid the greenery around the twigs, finishing it off with some plum colored dainty garland I had left over from another staging and a few pinecones from the wreath.  I had more comments on the urns that just about anything else I did.  In fact, I bumped into a realtor at an event last week – and she remembered that staging job from the urns!!

Being that it was a rush job – next time I would put more twigs in for a bit more drama but I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.  This tip is for what to do in the upcoming season when you want some drama at a front entry but it’s hard to keep plants alive.  Great way to add some height to tall entry and some color at the same time without resorting to fake plants.

exterior urnsYou should have seen me tiptoing across the grass stealing dirt and gravel with my casserole dish from the site next door – I kept waiting for one of the workers to yell at me but no-one said anything so I kept digging!

I really liked the way these turned out – hope other stagers can use this idea this fall.