Often the Co-Chair of The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s Twilight Garden Party, Jane Gnazzo, is out of state visiting family at Christmas, and isn’t home to enjoy a wreath, but this year she’s staying in Boston through the gubernatorial inauguration, and ordered a pair of fully decorated wreaths for her home. Since Jane is from Texas, our designer designed a Texas-style wreath – Bigger is Better – with yellow roses, red berries, and gold ivy to draw out the colors in the bow.

Sometimes we don’t know where our wreaths are destined to be hung, but in this instance we knew the matched pair would be hung on the doors of one of Back Bay’s most prestigious mansions, an imposing white stone structure on Commonwealth Avenue.  Since the customer was also a new customer, we were eager to impress.  The requested silver bows are not somber, but a cheerful polka dot, and the pearls, silver painted lotus pods, and silver tipped white pine lend a frosty look.  Touches of red keep the wreath merry – there are small children to please here, as well.

We welcome feedback from our wreath buyers.  Obviously we love hearing that the product delivered is superb, but we also know that there are years the customer may be dissatisfied for one reason or another.  We can sometimes tell the problem by reading between the lines of this year’s order – “small bow, please” means we oversized the bow last year.  In the order shown below, we were asked to “very fully decorate” the wreath.  Clearly we erred on the minimalist side last year.  We got a call following delivery – “Best wreath ever!”

Delivering our wreaths is just as much a work of art as decorating our wreaths.  In this instance, a customer requesting a cream bow and copper accented wreath had failed to remember to remind her housekeeper to answer the door when we buzzed.  We returned to home base with the wreath, and telephoned.  The buyer said she was definitely there now, if we could return, which we did.  Needless to say, she wasn’t there.  We called again, from the address, and she instructed the crew to leave the wreath in the vestibule.  Since there was a nail, we hung the wreath on a nail beside the front door.  At 8:30 pm, our Delivery Chair received a call asking when we were delivering the wreath.  We were naturally convinced the wreath had been stolen, but the deliverer decided to go back to the address the next morning to check.  The wreath was there, right on the nail.  Following a few more calls, the owner repeated her assurance that the wreath was not there, and now we began to question our sanity.  So back again (fifth time) we went and rang the bell.  The customer’s husband was home, and was shown the wreath, hanging beside the door.  He admitted he never thought to look there.  Happy holidays to all our delivery crew – they are the best, most competent, and most even tempered of us all.

While we love to promote our new designers, as yesterday’s post showed, we always pay tribute to our experienced ones, who each year mentor and train our “first years” by teaching them balance, color harmony, and mechanical techniques.  We rarely identify our decorators to the public, for good reason.  Special requests by customers for one decorator or another can overburden the system, and there is the opportunity to receive a wonderful surprise each year if the designer changes.  The customer here ordered a wreath with burgundy and gold bow and gold accents.  A very experienced and loyal designer created the wreath below.