And we wrap up another season of Wreath of the Day. Choosing the wreaths is terribly hard because so many beautiful wreaths are still to be shown. The example below is one half of a mirror image matched pair. We hope you have enjoyed the feature and for those who are not yet registered to receive our daily email notices, please go to the bottom of the home page at www.gardenclubbackbay.org and sign up. No advertising, lists are never shared or sold, and you’ll be informed of all the latest local happenings in the fields of gardening, the environment, food and wine, and travel, to name just a few categories. Happy New Year to all.

Wreath of the Day would not be complete without a New Year’s Eve glamour wreath, and the one below in midnight blue with touches of black and silver fits the bill. It is hung on a covered porch in Cambridge and is lit, so the sparkle can be seen. This was a gift wreath (we wouldn’t send this to someone we didn’t know ) and the recipient was delighted.

Below is a wreath which is both romantic and sophisticated, with dried roses and antique gold ribbon, destined for an indoor location, since we don’t use dried flowers outdoors.

We ask for ribbon color preference on our order forms but many times customers leave it to us to decide, and this year we had a gold ribbon crisis – we actually ran out of pure gold ribbon choices by Thursday. Frantic discussions ensued: “Do you think this passes for gold? Is this more cream than gold? What about gold with a little red in it?” We thankfully ended the week with enough gold ribbon to fulfill our orders and next year will be stocking up on this popular color. Pure red, and red and gold, remain the favored choices, with plaids coming in third.

Ribbon prices have skyrocketed since we began doing wreaths in the 1990’s. Each year there has been a creep up, and we do admit that we ourselves tend to purchase nicer ribbon these days than we did in the past, since we have more fun working with the nice stuff. As a result, in 2018 we will be raising our bow price by $5, so standard and large wreaths with bows only will be $50 and $60 respectively.  Our fully decorated wreaths will remain the same, since we already raised that price this year. We use almost five yards of ribbon per bow, and we hope our customers know to remove the bow at the end of the season (February, in many cases) to re-use for other purposes.

The Garden Club of the Back Bay wishes you all a very Merry Christmas. Today’s wreath just sings “Christmas.”

We don’t just sell wreaths – we sell red and white poinsettias, too.  Enormous poinsettias.  Fill the whole bay window poinsettias. To emphasize the “point”, below is a wreath featuring a special poinsettia themed ribbon, which is a strong statement to help you all remember next year to add a plant on your order form.

One decorator was amused to be told this year that one of her wreaths was an upscale version of FTD, and no offense was taken since the design mirrored the customer’s request. However, by and large, no one could ever look at one of our wreaths and mistake it for something ordered on line or over the phone from a national chain.  The country-sophisticated design below is a case in point.

We thank Dan Donahue of The Lenox Hotel, a valued customer, who this year generously delivered an amazing spread of sandwiches, salads, breads, Greek specialties, and dare we admit it, wine and Prosecco, to The First Lutheran Church of Boston.  We didn’t crack open the wine on site, but enjoyed the other items and saved the rest for our end of week closing celebration, for those volunteers who were still hanging in there on Thursday.  We hope you will all take a moment to visit City Bar or one of the other tasty establishments at the Lenox this year and toast the holidays. Below is one of the (six!) wreaths we made for Dan this year, this one with a crown signifying he is a King to us.

We added a new category to our order form this year – Glamorous Glitz. It’s a work in progress, since some of our decorators are a little afraid of it, and only a few customers actually specified it, but the results were outstanding. Glamorous Glitz doesn’t mean that no natural materials are used – it just means that glittery, frankly artificial materials may be used to enhance the design, as the wreath below demonstrates.