When I saw that one of my favorite florists, Saipua, would be offering an orchid class this month, I wished I could hop a plane to New York to take part (but being nine months pregnant with twins kind of makes that a non-starter). In any case, I was inspired; because they're greenhouse-grown in mild climates, cut orchids are a perfect topic for this time of year, when the flower markets are relatively bare.

In 2010 I could not get enough of vertical wall gardens, but already in this brand new year I'm feeling a kind of aesthetic shift towards something a little less structured and more exotic. Hanging gardens untethered to walls, with their artful trailing shapes and allusions to Babylon, might be just the thing.

The poinsettia — that ubiquitous supermarket holiday plant — gets kind of a bad rap and has become a cliché symbol of the season. But it's actually an interesting plant, a euphorbia native to Mexico — the brightly colored bracts are in fact leaves, not petals. There are many varieties beyond the standard reds and pinks, and of course there are also many ways to display and treat your poinsettias to give them a fresh holiday look.

These are some of my favorite picks this year among holiday gifts for the botanically inclined. Some of them are profoundly impractical trinkets; others are implements your plant-and-flower-loving friends will use for years. There are gifts for those who just like to gaze at plants and flowers, and gifts for those who like to work with them, most under $100.

To me, the smells and textures of an evergreen wreath are an indispensable part of the holiday season, but I do get kind of bored with the look of them. Usually I just dress up my wreath with an interesting scrap of fabric as a bow, but this strategy gets a bit old too. So this year I went a few steps further and added some living plants, succulent cuttings and tillandsias that will happily go on living long after New Year's.

As it turns out, this may be my last chaos-free Thanksgiving for quite some time; my husband and I are expecting twins in February! As the holiday season unfolds, I'm trying to embrace the peace and quiet and put my feet up often, but I also feel a little bit sad not to be hosting any parties or dinners this year. So I've been trying to think of ways to get a bit of a "hostess fix" without overdoing it.

Regina's recent post about a mix-and-match Thanksgiving got me thinking about how to really make this work for holiday dinners. If your style tends toward the minimalist, the idea might seem unappealing. But really, how many of us own enough coordinated table decor to host a big dinner without employing the mix-and-match look?

I'm one of those people who likes being told where to sit at a party. I realize that this is far from a universal feeling, but if you're hosting dinner at the holidays this year, there are lots of reasons to consider place cards for your party, not the least of which is that they're a great way to add some creative details to your tabletop!

The appeal of the traditional autumnal color palette—deep rusty reds and oranges, saffron yellows, chocolate browns—is certainly due in part to how strongly it stirs nostalgia and warmth. But lately I've been seeing some less expected, equally stirring versions of seasonal color in some of my favorite florists' work. Let's take a look at these alternative autumn palettes so you can try them out at home.

The week leading up to Halloween seems like the perfect time to learn about carnivorous plants. Some varieties of these flesh-eating beauties are surprisingly easy to grow at home, and in cut flower arrangements they're as long-lasting as they are gorgeous.