Thanksgiving decorating from the landscape

If you are hosting Thanksgiving dinner and are looking for inexpensive ways to decorate, look no further than your own backyard. Mother Nature has generously provided all you need to decorate your home inside and out for Thanksgiving.

Your front porch sets the tone as guests arrive. Don't be so anxious to remove cornstalks and hay bales after Halloween. They are just as appropriate for Thanksgiving to set a harvest theme.

You may have to replace pumpkins and gourds that have been "frostbitten" in October. Try some new and unusual varieties and your guests will notice.

Add a few weather-resistant pots filled with ornamental cabbage or kale. They have burst into full color with October's cool temperatures.

Put grapevine or honeysuckle vine, entwined with outdoor ribbon, along the porch railing or around the front door.

Poke a hole through the tops of small gourds, thread them with twine, and you have gourd garland. Use it on its own or in combination with another vine.

A grapevine wreath on the front door completes the scene. It's easy to make your own. The best time to harvest your grapevines is after the fruit has been picked, but before the first frost. Cut long pieces of vine and remove the leaves. Begin with the thick end of the vine and make a loop a little smaller than the ultimate size of the wreath.

Overlap the large end and weave it around the loop. Continue to weave the vine in and out. When beginning to weave in a new vine, wrap it in the opposite direction. Continue this process until your wreath is the desired size.

If you've missed your chance to harvest vines this year, remember this for next year and buy a grapevine wreath at your local craft store. With a hot glue gun, add pinecones, berries, seedpods and preserved fall leaves. Add a bow. Voila!

It's easy to preserve the beauty of fall leaves. Preserving them with glycerin is the best way to keep them for several years. Begin by choosing colorful leaves that are flat without imperfections. Wipe them clean with a damp cloth.

To preserve individual leaves, mix one part glycerin to two parts water in a shallow pan. Place leaves in the solution. Weigh them down so they remain submerged. In two or three days, check to see if the leaves are soft. If they still feel like dry leaves, put them back in the solution for another two or three days. When leaves are soft and pliable, blot them dry.

You can also preserve small branches. Cut small branches and put the stems in a bucket of warm water immediately. Keep them in the water and out of direct sunlight for a couple hours. Mix one part glycerin and two parts water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Then turn down the heat and simmer for five to 10 minutes. Allow the solution to cool. Remove the branches from the water, smash the stems lightly with a hammer, and place them into the glycerin solution. Small beads of dew will form on the leaves when they have absorbed all the solution they can. Remove the branches and blot the leaves. Hang them upside down until they are dry.

Just inside your home, place a large vase filled with a few of those branches with preserved leaves. Simple, but charming.

Your fireplace mantel is easy to dress up. Its long, narrow shape is perfectly suited to a row of miniature pumpkins with orange-plaid ribbon and bittersweet woven through. Or get nostalgic and start "remember when" conversations by including family photographs in the display.

Want something a little more complicated? Collect a few birch branches from the yard to lay across the mantle. Add tiny white Christmas lights. Place a clear cylinder vase filled with green apples in the center. Sprinkle fall leaves, small gourds, berries and seedpods throughout.

Gather natural materials to create your centerpiece. Take a walk in the backyard and collect acorns, seedpods, interesting stones, branches, grasses and mosses. Cover the bottom and sides of the container with moss. Artfully place the rest of your treasures in a favorite bowl or basket.

Carve a hole in a pumpkin so that a pillar candle slips inside. With a hot glue gun, attach pinecones and seedpods around the hole. Surround the pumpkin with birch bark, pinecones, berries and moss.

Here's the simplest centerpiece of all: put an assortment of pumpkins on different-sized pedestal cake plates. Some fall leaves will soften their bases.

It's easy to add glitz to your centerpiece. Spray paint a variety of small gourds and mini pumpkins gold. Then stack them on a glass cake plate or fill a clear cylinder vase with them - very elegant!

Create placeholders from natural materials, too. Cut a slit in a small gourd that stands upright and it becomes a placeholder. Or cut a small opening in the top of a mini pumpkin, tuck in a nosegay of fall flowers, and rest a name card in front. The simplest idea of all-choose a mini pumpkin for each guest and insert a metal plant marker inscribed with the name.

•Diana Stoll is a Master Gardener and the retail manager of The Planter's Palette, 28W571 Roosevelt Road, Winfield, IL 60190. Call (630) 293-1040 or visit planterspalette.com.