Add colorful flair to your holiday décor and gift-giving by including a few unique holiday plants. You and your gift recipients will appreciate their uniqueness and beauty throughout the holidays and beyond.

Poinsettias are a favorite and now you can find unique colors from pure white to hot pink, and others with variegated leaves or flowers, which are actually modified leaves called bracts, like sparkling rouge.

Include some other unique holiday plants available from your favorite garden center. You’ll find a variety of cyclamen plants with plain or ruffled white, pink, rose, lavender or bicolor flowers that look like shooting stars. The blooms hover over heart-shaped leaves with silvery highlights. These plants prefer cool, bright, draft-free locations. Water when the soil is dry just below the surface.

Use miniature cyclamen and poinsettias as a place card holder at your next gathering or to brighten any small space. Dress up the dinner table, mantle or side table with one of the larger varieties. Large or small, any holiday plant makes wonderful party favors and hostess gifts. Place the plants in a decorative container, basket, or colorful tin for a more impressive display. Be sure to include care directions.

Add a bit of lemon fragrance with the chartreuse foliage of Lemon Cypress (Hesperocyparis macrocarpa formerly Cupressus macrocarpa). Its narrow upright growth habit makes it an excellent holiday plant. Grow it in a sunny window with six to eight hours of sunlight a day. Water thoroughly when the top inch or two of the soil is dry. Group it with other plants or set the pot on a gravel tray. The pebbles elevate the pot above the water in the saucer, avoiding root rot while increasing humidity around the plant. Those gardening in zones 7 and warmer can grow this as a landscape plant. Those in colder climates can move it outdoors for summer and back inside in the fall.

Frosty Fern (Selaginella) with white-tipped, scalelike leaves has become a recent holiday favorite. It is a spike moss, not a true fern, and thrives in moist soil with good drainage. Use distilled or rainwater for the best results and check soil moisture several times a week. This is a perfect plant for those that tend to overwater. Grow frosty fern with other houseplants, on a gravel tray or under a glass enclosure like a terrarium or Wardian case as it requires high humidity to survive. Place this plant in a bright location out of direct sunlight. Don’t be alarmed as the white tips will fade as spring approaches but the texture continues to add interest to any indoor plant collection.

Whether giving, receiving, or buying some for yourself, living gifts like these will brighten anyone’s mood and indoor décor.

Holiday creations from indoor and garden plants

Don’t let winter stop you from bringing a bit of the outdoors inside. Take a break from the holiday rush for a bit of gardening and crafting relief. Grab a pruner and basket then wander through your landscape gathering a few evergreen branches, berry-laden stems, and cones to create a holiday centerpiece or décor.

No landscape, no problem. Ask a gardening friend if you can collect a few items from their gardens. Invite them to join in the fun and create their own arrangements.

Gather a variety of greens to create a foundation of texture and backdrop for the other additions. The fanlike sprays of arborvitae, blue-green sprigs of juniper, and stems of other evergreens like yews, boxwoods, pines, and spruces provide all the greenery you need.

Now explore mixed borders and hedges for items with interesting colors or shapes. Red and yellow twig dogwoods, curly willow, contorted filbert, and fantail willow provide interesting color and form.

Collect a few cones, berries and fruit, such as rose hips, blue berry-like cones of junipers, sweet gum seedpods and alder’s cone-like fruit. These are great substitutes for flowers often used in summer arrangements.

Make a stop at your flower gardens for seedheads of coneflowers, alliums, penstemon, milkweeds, balloon plants and more. Collect fluffy seed heads of noninvasive ornamental and native grasses for filler. All these add beautiful natural elements to any centerpiece or can be painted or glittered for added glitz. And don’t be afraid to add a few shiny ornaments for a bit of holiday flair.

Then dress up your indoor plants for the holidays. Add glittery holiday picks, silk flowers, faux berry-laden branches and decorative ornaments for more color and sparkle. Add these to small potted plants to create a centerpiece and larger plants to provide more seasonal color to your holiday décor.

Stop by your favorite florist or garden center and purchase a few water picks and cut flowers. Place the cut flowers in the picks and sink them into the pots of your favorite houseplants. This adds some color and seasonal interest to any green plant.

Make them shine year-round with a few seasonal updates. Plant several compatible indoor plants in a large container. Sink a small empty pot in the space where you want to create a seasonal focal point. Set a small potted flowering plant like a miniature poinsettia, azalea, hydrangea, African violet or cyclamen inside this empty one. Replace the flowering plant occasionally to freshen up the container garden or create a seasonal display.

Make it even easier to change the display by filling a large basket with a collection of individually potted green and flowering plants. Switch flowers as they fade and foliage plants as the holidays, your mood or the décor changes.

Consider creating a few extras as gifts to share throughout the holidays. You and the recipient will enjoy the festive creation.

Melinda Myers is the author of more than 20 gardening books, including “Small Space Gardening” and “Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition.” Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and her website is MelindaMyers.com.