Tired of spending the evening after your big Christmas feast trying to get all that tinsel and glitter out of your hands, your hair, and occasionally, your kid’s eye? This festive season, use the Garden City’s bounty for a fresh, floral approach to X-mas decorating!
Crank up the wow factor of your Christmas dinner with an opulent flower arrangement. Tall candles in red, white, silver and gold are ideal for a festal board. Surround the candles with wet florist’s foam.
Stick fronds of dark green foliage into the foam surrounding the base of the candles and fill up with flowers in traditional Yuletide hues. Try vivid red-bronze asters to offset white or silver candles, red roses with golden candles, or white chrysanthemums under red candles. If you can get your hands on them, throw in some pine cones and spiky coniferous leaves to jazz up your candle centrepiece.
Any sort of spray of red berries is perfect – even if it’s growing on the side of the road, pick it off and use it in your floral decorations. Up the ante by using a silver-plated bowl or crystal vase.
Red tulips in a glass vase are fabulous just on their own, while sprays of white orchids studded among dark green leaves make a great show. While you’re spreading the Christmas spirit around, don’t neglect the other rooms! Use fronds of trailing ivy or sections of money plant around the windows to mimic the effect of mistletoe, or just drape them artistically on any flower arrangement.
You can also use fruit to great effect with flowers, especially for a floral centrepiece in the kitchen. The gleam of the candlelight reflecting off polished red apples and white carnations makes for a cosy Christmassy kitchen, redolent, of course, with the delicious smells of baking! Another great idea is a centrepiece of gleaming oranges and dark green lemon leaves surrounded by sprays of white orchids. Glam up your fruit/flower arrangement with a strategic placement of whole walnuts in their shells. Use vases filled with tall stems of fragrant tube-roses or elegant white gladioli for the bathrooms. For the master bedroom, do a classic combination of heavily-scented red roses, their deep green leaves still on, combined with lacy strands of white baby’s breath. Use windowsills for blooming potted plants – think red petunias, white or red chrysanthemums and red salvias.
A pretty low bowl filled with sweet-smelling white roses is enough to lift a room, so let your little ones wake up to their wonderful scent on Christmas morning. If you’ve got toddlers, place big (and hard to knock over) pots of blooming poinsettia, a traditional Christmas flower, in strategic corners, to brighten up your home.
Liven up wreaths by studding them with red gerberas (African daisies) or even the humble red hibiscus on the outside of the front door to welcome the season of joy into your home. This holiday season, say it with flowers – Merry Christmas!
