CHRISTMAS HOME AND OFFICE STYLING INSPIRATION

STEP INTO CHRISTMAS :

Top tips on dressing a space for the festive season and getting in the spirit with our legendary Christmas workshops

Christmas starts early in a florist’s calendar. Planning our incredibly popular Christmas workshops begins while we’re still flowering weddings in the heat of summer. Now the leaves are turning and the nights are drawing in, the time seems right to bring you along for the festive ride!

I just can’t wait to get flowering and styling over the Christmas period and the team and I will be busy dressing corporate foyers and private homes across London and the South East. Our Christmas door wreath delivery service will begin in late November, along with festive table arrangements and gift bouquets being sent out throughout December.

Why do we decorate with foliage at Christmas?

But where did this obsession for draping evergreen foliage everywhere at Christmas time come from and why are we Brits so obsessed with it? There isn’t a surface in my house that isn’t adorned with a sprig of winter foliage by the time the big day rolls around so I was keen to find out!

It turns out, evergreens were used in pagan traditions during the Winter solstice to symbolise the promise of spring and eternal life and caught on from there, being adopted as a decoration as Christianity spread. Church records from the late Middle Ages show the purchase of holly and ivy up and down the land around the Christmas period and by the 16thCentury, hymns such as “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” celebrated the widespread craze for festive evergreens. And despite everyone thinking that it was Prince Albert who introduced the Christmas tree to England, it was actually “good Queen Charlotte”, wife of George III, who set up the first known tree around 1800 at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, having been inspired by traditions from her native Germany. So there you have it…a bit of festive foliage history in a nutshell!

Ideas for dressing your home for Christmas

It’s no wonder that in the darkest, most dreary time of the year, we enjoy bringing nature inside to lift our spirits and get us in a celebratory mood. Nothing beats the smell of pine, cinnamon and citrus wafting from the wreath on your door as you come home weary from Christmas shopping or from the festive mantlepiece arrangement in your lounge as you hunker down on the sofa with a mulled wine!

I take great pleasure in dressing our clients’ homes at this time of year and use a huge variety of foliages to create the abundant look that Christmas calls for. Alongside blue pine, my favourites include acacia, berried ivy, cupressus, cedar and keifer pine which come together in a mass of silvers and greens to add interest and luxury to any festive arrangement.

For a natural look to our mantlepiece displays, wreaths and table arrangements, I like to add cones, cinnamon sticks, dried limes or oranges, lichen twigs and dried eucalyptus pods. Or for a more lux look, as seen in the pictures below, metallic foliage, hydrangea, twigs and cones can be used for a sumptuous, opulent feel that fits in so well with the season and in the lounge on the left, worked perfectly with the gold framed Audrey Hepburn above the mantlepiece!

Whether using metallics or keeping it au naturel, all of our designs follow our signature, unstructured style where materials are allowed to breath. And don’t forget that if adding in fresh flowers, such as roses, this will need to wait until a couple of days before Christmas so that they don’t wilt before the 25th.

For a Christmas table arrangement, a traditional low design with a central candle always looks festive and can be packed with fruit, cones and berries for a gorgeous visual treat that is sure to impress guests. Alternatively, and becoming increasingly popular, is placing bud vases of flowers in rich hues, interspersed with tall dinner candles to give an incredibly elegant look to your dinner table.

Decorating Christmas trees is another favourite job of mine and it’s a good thing I enjoy it as  the team and I will be up ladders from early November dressing trees and bringing festive cheer to office and public foyers in the area. My view is that more is more when it comes to Christmas trees – go for the biggest tree you can to fit your space and budget and make sure its branches are dripping with baubles and twinkly lights! We deliver beautiful, top quality Nordic trees in the South London and North Kent area so do get in touch if you’d like my help sourcing and/or dressing a tree this year.

Get creative and begin the festive season with us!

And as for door wreaths, I’ll do another post on those soon but it’s fair to say that no house is ready for Christmas without one. We can, of course, make and deliver one to your home but if you’d like to kickstart the festive season with an uplifting evening of creativity and make your own, we’d love you to join us for our Luxury Christmas Wreath Workshop at historic Dulwich College on Thursday 4th December. See our Workshops page for all the details and a booking link. Places go fast so get in quick! Or if you’d like to learn how to make your very own festive table arrangement, you can do so at our evening workshop on Thursday 18th December, also at Dulwich College, where you’ll create a beautifully scented candle centrepiece using fresh, festive foliage and seasonal touches. Needless to say that both workshops will be accompanied with mulled wine or bubbles, delicious edible treats and Christmas tunes and cheer aplenty!

I hope to see you there,

Elaine x

Owner/Creative Director