Plants such as tall outdoor plants, ivy, and mistletoe had been used in celebrations long before the advent of Christianity and the Christmas celebrations we know today. Evergreens were used to ward off evil spirits and celebrate new growth during the Winter Solstice Festival as early as ancient times.
As Christian traditions became prevalent in Western Europe, greenery was kept as part of the celebrations, but ascribed new religious meanings. If you’re curious why today we decorate the Christmas tree, or how mistletoe became the excuse to steal kisses, here’s a rundown of the most traditional and popular Christmas plants used in the UK, with care tips for each one.
TL;DR
- Poinsettia, holly, mistletoe, ivy, and rosemary are the most traditional Christmas plants in the UK.
- Poinsettia is the UK’s best-selling Christmas pot plant — around 8 million are sold each year. Keep it above 15°C and away from cold windowpanes.
- Holly berries and mistletoe berries are both toxic — keep them away from children and pets.
- Christmas rose (Hellebore niger) blooms November through February and is one of the few plants that flowers outdoors in the UK winter.
- Amaryllis bulbs planted in early November will typically bloom by Christmas; buy pre-started bulbs for reliability.
- Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) is longer-lived and easier to maintain than poinsettia and blooms reliably with the right light/dark cycle.
- Kissing boughs pre-date the Christmas tree in British tradition and were common in UK homes from the Middle Ages.
Table of Contents
Rosemary
Rosemary is a popular outdoor Christmas plant option known for its pleasant aroma. It has pointy, needle-looking green leaves. It produces purple, blue or white flowers in late spring to early summer. Newly developed rosemary is flexible and soft. As it ages, the plant becomes woody and forms trunks.
The quintessential holiday herb, rosemary is as classic as the Christmas tree. Its association with Christmas dates back long before the poster child poinsettia had anything to do with it. Rosemary is believed to have been one of the plants in the manger where baby Jesus was cradled.
In the Middle Ages, people believed that if they smelled rosemary on Christmas Eve, they would be healthy and happy throughout the new year, so they walked on rosemary spread across the floors, starting a tradition of rosemary in Christmas decorations that we continue today — with the tabletop rosemary Christmas trees, wreaths, festive swags, and evergreen bouquets.
How to take care of rosemary
- Keep your rosemary bush for Christmas fresh by pruning it according to schedule. Make sure to mist the herb afterward.
- Keep it near a direct source of light (either next to a sunlit window or outside under full sun).
- In order for the plant to survive until Christmas, water it regularly, even though it’s drought tolerant. Water once every 7 to 14 days, since you won’t be able to know from its leaves — they don’t wilt at all.
- Repot at some point or plant outside until the next Christmas comes.
- Shape the rosemary from spring, through summer and autumn, and when cold winds come, bring it indoors again.
- Repot again in a larger pot for improved water retention with good drainage potting soil mix.
Holly
Holly is an interesting evergreen tree that is a part of many traditions. The common UK holly is Ilex aquifolium — the leaves of a young tree have spikes, while older ones have smoother foliage. The colour of holly leaves is dark green and glossy. Female holly trees can produce Christmas berries in late autumn to early winter. If you want the plant to develop berries, make sure to plant a male and a female tree. This will ensure cross-pollination. Note that holly berries are toxic if ingested — keep them well away from children and pets. Holly is also protected under UK law, so never strip branches from wild trees.
The Druids considered holly to be a sacred plant and attributed magical powers to its red berries and prickly thorns. Holly was a symbol of eternal life and fertility and they believed that hanging the plant in homes would bring good luck and protection. Christians continued the holy tradition from Druid, Celtic and Roman traditions, changing its symbolism to reflect Christian beliefs.
Today, holly is considered an outdoor Xmas plant that is a symbol of Jesus Christ in two ways: its red berries represent the blood that Jesus shed on the cross and the pointed leaves refer to the crown of thorns Jesus wore when he died on the cross.
How to take care of holly
- After you plant the holly, water every day for the first seven days, then lower down to twice a week. After establishment, the bush will need roughly 2 inches of water at a minimum every week.
- Fertilising should happen once a year.
- Holly bush must be pruned often so that it doesn’t block air by itself.
- Don’t cut too much from it when it’s time to make the Christmas decorations. An extra bush will help minimise the cuts from a single one.
- And, most importantly, weed often.
Mistletoe
Mistletoe is a small woody evergreen shrub. It grows on the branches of other trees and develops a ball-like shape on their crowns. Mistletoe’s leaves have an oval shape and are dark-green in colour. The flowers of mistletoe are small and white, in clusters of three to five. It produces small white or red berries in clusters.
Again, thank the Druids for the tradition of hanging mistletoe. Like the holly, it was believed to possess mystical powers and bring good luck to the household. In Norse mythology, mistletoe was a sign of love and friendship and that’s where probably the custom of kissing under mistletoe originated.
Although during the first Christmas celebrated in Western Europe, some tried to ban the use of mistletoe as a Christmas plant decoration in churches, many people still continued to use it in their festive decorations. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe originated in England. A berry was picked from the sprig of mistletoe before the person could be kissed and when there were no more berries left, there could be no more kissing!
How to take care of mistletoe
- Mistletoe loves brisk weather — so keep the plant outside, in a shed or in your garage.
- If the leaves look dry, spray with some cool water.
- As heat inside your house will worsen its condition, keep mistletoe in a cold area for as long as possible.
- Keep it well out of reach of children and pets — mistletoe berries are toxic if ingested. Contact NHS 111 or a vet immediately if ingestion is suspected.
- Mistletoe also gets sticky — wash your hands after touching it.
Ivy
Ivy is a climbing plant that produces aerial roots. It has an ability to wrap around walls, fences, trees and anything else it comes in contact with. This climber is also known for its lack of flowers. Ivy’s leaves are grass-green in colour with a lobed shape. They grow along with climbing and trailing stems.
The use of ivy during winter goes back thousands of years. Ivy stayed green throughout the year, prompting some to believe it had magical properties and leading to its use as home decor in the winter months.
Like the holly, it also symbolised eternal life and rebirth and was used to decorate homes and churches, as early as the 15th and 16th centuries. With its tendency to cling, ivy was the symbol of marriage and friendship in some cultures, and in Christianity it represents the need to cling to God for support.
How to take care of ivy:
- Leave the ivy pot in a place where it will get at least four hours of direct sunlight.
- Fertilise once a month and keep the potting mix moist.
- Cool temperature will keep ivy alive for longer.
- Repot when the plant overcrowds its original pot.
- Make the ivy more bushy by pinching off the tips of its stems.
Poinsettia
Poinsettias have branching stems and carry dark green leaves. At the leaf tips they have interesting-looking pink, red or cream coloured bracts. The plant’s flowers are very small and have a ball shape. They are yellow in colour and are located at the top of the poinsettia’s stems.
Native to Central America, the poinsettia became widely known thanks to a man called Joel Roberts Poinsett, hence the name, who introduced the plant from Mexico to the US in 1825. An old Mexican legend intertwines poinsettias and Christmas, telling the story of a poor girl who had no present to give to baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, so she made a small bouquet of weeds.
As she put the bouquet at the nativity scene, it bloomed with bright red flowers, convincing everyone who saw it they’d witnessed a miracle. Since that day, the bright red flowers became known as the ‘Flores de Noche Buena’, or ‘Flowers of the Holy Night’. Nowadays, poinsettias with their festive colours are one of the most popular Christmas plants to display or give as a present to friends and family. In the UK, roughly 8 million poinsettias are sold in the weeks leading up to Christmas each year, making it the country’s best-selling Christmas pot plant by far. One thing to know before you buy: the milky sap can cause mild skin irritation and is mildly toxic, so keep it away from pets and small children.
How to take care of Poinsettia
- Keep the room temperature at around 20°C during the day and cooler at night — never let it drop below 15°C.
- Place poinsettia in a sunny windowsill that faces south, or leave a bright filtered light nearby.
- If the windowpane gets cold, make sure the leaves do not come in contact with it, as it will damage them.
- Avoid placing near radiators or in draughts — this is the most common cause of early leaf drop in UK homes.
- Don’t worry if poinsettia’s leaves turn yellow; the plant is adapting to the new conditions and will slowly resume its colour.
Christmas rose
Christmas rose is a beautiful clump-forming perennial plant. It has leathery dark green leaves and gorgeous looking white flowers. Technically it’s a hellebore — Helleborus niger — not a rose at all, but the name has stuck.
Similar to the poinsettia, with the Christmas rose it’s another story about a girl who had no gift for the Christ child. According to legend, Christmas roses sprang from the tears of a young shepherd girl who was weeping with sadness after searching in vain for a Christmas flower to give to baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
A Christmas rose will bloom in the darkest and coldest months of the year, producing flowers from late autumn until early spring — typically November through to February outdoors in the UK. It holds an RHS H5 hardiness rating, meaning it’s fully hardy across most of the UK and needs no winter protection. Grow it outdoors in partial shade in well-drained, humus-rich soil and it will look after itself. Bear in mind that all parts of the hellebore plant are toxic if ingested, so keep children and pets away from it.
How to take care of Christmas roses
- Keep Christmas roses long lasting by repotting into a bigger plastic pot once a year during mid- to late-August.
- Add a fertiliser with a slow release effect when you repot the plant.
- For outdoor plants, choose a spot in partial shade with well-drained, humus-rich soil — they need no protection over winter.
- Finally, move potted hellebores back to a sheltered spot near a warm wall in late autumn.
Cyclamen
Cyclamen (Cyclamen persicum) is the second-best-selling Christmas pot plant in the UK, right behind the poinsettia. Walk into any supermarket or garden centre from October onwards and you’ll find them stacked near the entrance, in shades of white, pink, red, and deep purple. Their swept-back petals and marbled silver-green leaves give them a distinctive festive look that works just as well on a doorstep as on a windowsill.
Unlike the poinsettia, cyclamen actively prefers cool conditions, which makes it well suited to British homes and hallways. A well-kept cyclamen can flower for weeks on end through the Christmas period and well into the new year. They grow from a flattened tuber and, with the right care after flowering, can be brought back into bloom the following season.
How to take care of cyclamen
- Keep cyclamen in a cool, bright room — temperatures between 10°C and 15°C suit them best. Avoid central heating.
- Water from below by sitting the pot in a shallow tray of water for 20 minutes, then letting it drain fully. Never water directly onto the tuber, as it will rot.
- Remove dead flowers and yellowing leaves by twisting them off cleanly at the base — this encourages new blooms.
- Feed with a half-strength liquid fertiliser every two weeks while the plant is in flower.
- After flowering, reduce watering and allow the leaves to die back naturally. Store the dry tuber in a cool, dark place over summer, then resume watering in early autumn to trigger a second season of growth.
Skimmia
Skimmia japonica has become a genuine fixture of the UK Christmas plant display over the last decade. You’ll find it sold alongside poinsettias in supermarkets and garden centres from November onwards — often as a compact pot plant with clusters of deep red berries and glossy evergreen leaves that hold their look right through winter.
It’s an easy plant to like. It’s fully hardy in the UK, tolerates shade (which few berrying plants do), and looks festive without any effort on your part. Like holly, skimmia needs both a male and a female plant nearby to produce berries reliably — though many compact varieties sold as pot plants are bred to be self-fertile. The berries are mildly toxic if eaten, so treat them with the same caution as holly or mistletoe.
How to take care of skimmia
- Grow in sun or partial shade — skimmia is one of the few berrying shrubs that performs well in a shaded spot.
- Plant in moist, well-drained, slightly acidic soil. If growing in a pot, use ericaceous compost.
- Water regularly during dry spells but avoid waterlogging. Skimmia dislikes sitting in wet soil.
- Feed with an ericaceous fertiliser in spring to support healthy growth and berry production.
- Little pruning is needed — simply remove any damaged stems after flowering in spring.
The Christmas tree
Fir trees are capable of reaching heights of up to 200 feet. They have a straight trunk and a narrow, cone-shaped crown. Fir trees have narrow and pointy small leaves that typically have a deep green or blue-green colour. The leaves are arranged in an interesting spiral pattern on the branches. Fir’s bark is brown or grey, covered in resin blisters.
Although evergreen fir tree has traditionally been used to celebrate winter festivals for thousands of years, the pivotal Christmas tree is a relatively modern addition to British Christmas traditions.
Bringing a tree inside and decorating it in the way we know today first happened in 16th-century Germany, and became popular elsewhere in the 19th century. The first Christmas trees came to Britain sometime in the 1830s and became very popular almost a decade later, when Queen Victoria and her German husband Albert had a Christmas tree set up in Windsor Castle.
How to take care of Christmas tree
- If labelled as a pot-grown tree, its odds to stay alive until next Christmas season will be higher.
- In the UK, Nordmann Fir (Abies nordmanniana) is the most popular variety for needle retention — Norway Spruce drops needles faster in warm rooms.
- Keep the tree in a cool place and water it plenty — depending on the size, the Christmas tree can take up between 2 and 8 pints of water in a single day.
- Adjust your Christmas tree to the outer conditions after the holidays by moving it to a greenhouse or on the porch.
- Once spring comes, repot in a larger pot.
Amaryllis
What’s sold in UK garden centres and supermarkets as “amaryllis” is technically Hippeastrum — a South American genus that produces those enormous, trumpet-shaped blooms we associate with Christmas. True Amaryllis belladonna is a different plant entirely, but the common name has stuck and that’s what you’ll see on the label.
Hippeastrum has thick and pointy leaves. The plant’s flowers can grow up to 10 inches tall and can be either single or double in form. They’re available in a lot of different colours — the most common are white and red, but you’ll also find them in salmon, pink, apricot, rose and burgundy, and even bicoloured varieties like purple and green or picotee.
It’s not a safe bet that amaryllis will be replacing poinsettias as the Christmas plant any time soon, but for most gardeners their huge blooms are an essential part of Christmas celebration every year. If you want a blooming amaryllis for Christmas, plant the bulbs no later than the beginning of November — though it’s always safer to buy one already in bud.
How to take care of Amaryllis
- If bought as a pre-started bulb kit (the most common UK purchase), begin the care routine below after the first flowering season.
- Cut the stalk to 1 inch of the top of its bulb after fading.
- Feed with a liquid fertiliser and water timely.
- Amaryllis will grow leaves during the warmer seasons.
- Gradually decrease the amount of water towards the middle of August, so that the foliage dies and the bulb remains dormant.
- Store the bulb in a cool and dry place for two months, repot and resume watering.
- Increase watering gradually together with the plant’s growth.
- After a month and a half, the plant will blossom abundantly again.
Christmas cactus
The true Christmas cactus is Schlumbergera x buckleyi, a forest cactus native to Brazil that has nothing desert-like about it. In UK garden centres it’s sometimes sold alongside the very similar Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) — the easiest way to tell them apart is the stem segments: the true Christmas cactus has rounded, scalloped edges, while the Thanksgiving type has pointed, claw-like tips and tends to bloom a few weeks earlier. Both are sold simply as “Christmas cactus,” so it’s worth checking.
Christmas cactus grows out leafless green stems with similar properties to plant leaves, allowing it to photosynthesise. The stems are made of separate flattened sections that vary in length. At the end of each stem the plant produces beautiful white, pink, or red flowers. Apart from flowering over the Christmas period, the Christmas cactus has nothing to do with either the Christmas tradition or the story of Christ’s birth — its common name is derived only from its ability to flower during the season. Christmas cacti are long-lived and easier to maintain than their more popular Christmas counterparts, the poinsettias. A well-cared-for plant can survive for decades.
How to take care of a Christmas cactus:
- The Christmas cactus loves a combination of light and dark environment in autumn. Try to keep a schedule of roughly 12 hours per day for each of the cycles — this triggers bud formation.
- After buds come out, stop the strict light and dark exposure.
- Once buds engorge, the cactus is ready for display — but mind it shouldn’t be in a dry or too heated an environment.
- Continue feeding and watering while the cactus blooms and grows.
Kissing boughs
We know it’s not exactly a plant species, but before Christmas trees became popular in the UK, there was another form of evergreen Christmas decoration. Dating back to the Middle Ages, the kissing bough (or kissing bunch) was hung in houses to bring blessings to the family.
Originally, kissing boughs were made of five wooden hoops in the shape of a sphere and decorated with holly, ivy, rosemary, bay, fir or other evergreen plants. Red apples were hung inside the hoops, and a candle was either put inside the ball at the bottom or around a horizontal hoop. A large bunch of mistletoe hung from the bottom of the sphere, giving the bough the final touch.
Frequently Asked Questions About Christmas Plants
Which Christmas plant is easiest to keep alive indoors in the UK?
Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) is generally the longest-lived and most low-maintenance option. With basic care, it can survive for decades — unlike poinsettia, which most people discard after the season. It tolerates a range of indoor conditions, asks only for the right light/dark cycle in autumn to trigger flowering, and requires no specialist knowledge to keep going year after year.
Are Christmas plants toxic to cats and dogs?
Several popular Christmas plants are toxic to pets. Mistletoe berries, holly berries, and poinsettia sap are all harmful if ingested. Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) bulbs are also toxic to cats and dogs, as are all parts of the Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) and the berries of skimmia. Always keep these plants out of reach of animals, and contact your vet immediately if you suspect ingestion.
When should I buy a poinsettia in the UK for it to last through Christmas?
Buy from late November onwards. Look for compact plants with dark green foliage, tightly clustered small yellow flowers at the centre (not yet fully open), and no sign of wilting. Avoid plants that have been displayed near cold, draughty doors — chilling is the single most common reason a poinsettia deteriorates quickly after purchase.
Can I grow mistletoe in my garden in the UK?
Yes. Mistletoe (Viscum album) grows across southern England and the Midlands on host trees including apple, hawthorn, lime, and poplar. Press fresh berries onto a bark wound on a suitable host tree in February or March. Germination is slow and not guaranteed, but it does establish naturally in the right conditions.
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