O nce O nce again, my garden is just about out of steam. Winter is upon us — not by the calendar — but with temperatures dropping into the low 20s recently, I say it’s winter.

It’s no longer possible to step outside and fill a vase with my own flowers. The only flowers still blooming are my intrepid Johnny Jumps-Ups (Viola tricolor). At one time or another they have bloomed for me every month of the year. That’s right, if we have a January or February thaw, the Johnny’s may well bloom. But still, I long for more variety. As a freelance writer, I don’t have a big budget for cut flowers. But I do believe in buying a few stems to brighten the table on a regular basis. Recently I bought three stems of what are called “spider mums” for a total of just $4.50. I then went outside to see what I might add to these flowers to fill up the vase. There is a remarkable amount of useable material outside, both in the garden and in the wild.

The general rule of thumb is that an arrangement should be two to three times the height of the vase. I selected an 8-inch vase, and cut the mums down to about 20 inches. The mums are white, so to add color I cut some stems of winterberry (Ilex verticillata). Winterberry is our native deciduous holly plant that flaunts bright red berries at this time of year. They are commonly sold landscape plants but also grow wild in wet places along the road. They grow 4 to 12 feet tall; the stems I cut were about 3 feet long, and branched. I decided to cut off 12-inch side shoots and use them to form the lower portion of the arrangement. I put the tall mums in the center of the vase and their green leaves added a contrasting color and filled out the space between the blossoms and the berries. I also added a section of a clematis vine for more greenery.

At this time of year I crave greenery, so I was delighted to notice nice glossy leaves on my fall-blooming clematis (Clematis paniculata), a vine that I grow on a trellis. I had never before picked a vine to use in a vase, but it worked well. Vines, I just discovered, are wonderful in an arrangement: they are flexible and can be woven through stalks of tall stiff flowers or shrubs.

Next I went outside to collect things that are totally