The Garden Club of the Back Bay wishes you all a very Merry, and Safe, Christmas. We hope that next year brings families together again, with comfort and warmth. To those who have this year lost loved ones, our hearts go out to you, and you are in our thoughts.
We receive a fair number of orders for silver wreaths – silver bow with silver accents, silver bow with all natural accents, glamorous glitz with silver, but the challenge is to make the wreath warm and inviting, rather than cold and harsh. Different colored silver spray paints can cause problems. Some make leaves, such as magnolia leaves, look like radiators instead of sterling. Pine cones turn gray. One solution is a judicious addition of gold accents to the silver, which immediately lifts the design into another sphere. Below are some examples – the wreaths still read “silver” but the pitfall of the gray wreath is avoided.
Thanks today are extended to customer Donald Denniston, who each season purchases a wreath for his condominium, with the specification that the decorations be tight and controlled, since the door is an “active” door, opened and closed often. We try to keep the glitter off the floor.
On another day, we may delve into the popularity of various styles and bows, perhaps with a survey quiz, but for today we concentrate on this 2018 wreath with paw prints, bones, and overall doggie heaven theme, which was universally acclaimed (thank you, Susie Shafer, for the design). We also introduce you to the Garden Club’s newest mascot, who we hope will be guarding the wreaths outdoors next season, our Vice President Maureen O’Hara’s puppy Jackson, with the blue eyes. Follow him on Instagram @jacksonthemayorofbackbay, and don’t forget to follow us @gardenclubbackbay.
Today’s Wreath of the Day post is sponsored by Elisabeth and Michael McCord, recently retired as leaders of The Learning Project Elementary School, and active supporters of the neighborhood.
Members acquire many strange articles to add to the decorated wreaths. Often they come in with something they think looks beautiful (and is!), but we are left with the issue of how to attach them to the wreath. Some of us are better than others in this regard. We don’t use glue because glue becomes brittle and falls to pieces in freezing weather, and while people often promise they are hanging the wreath indoors, they change their minds and we can’t obligate them to keep their words. Some members come armed with electric drills and awls. Hammering has been heard. Below are some examples of what happens when the often large and interesting element are successfully incorporated.
Cathryn Griffith, today’s Wreath of the Day sponsor, lives near the First Lutheran Church where we make our wreaths, and famously decorates her own wreaths but buys the basic forms from us, which we very much appreciate. Perhaps we can convince her to decorate for us next year.
When you work with fresh greens for an hour or for a day, your hands acquire a coating of black tar which is difficult to get off. Many members find working in gloves cumbersome, but it takes a lot of scrubbing and soaking to rid yourself of the evidence of wreath making once you get home. We won’t even discuss how to de-glitter your hair, skin, and clothes – that is an impossibility and you will sparkle well into February. The pine tar, however, can be dealt with through a thorough rub with vegetable shortening, like Crisco, followed by handwashing with liquid dish detergent like Joy. A nail brush helps too, but the grease plus the detergent is pretty magical. You could use butter, we suppose, but that would be wasteful. A beautiful, all natural wreath like the one below would have deposited a fair amount of stickiness onto the decorator, but isn’t it gorgeous?
Noted floral arranger and Garden Club of the Back Bay member Donna Morrissey sponsored today’s Wreath of the Day post. Donna frequently represents the Club at Art in Bloom at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We sincerely hope Art in Bloom will be back in 2021.
Tip number three in our series of Wreath Making Made Less Difficult: lemon/lime soda. Dried sliced fruits like oranges, lemons, and apples, make charming accents (although as we’ve said before, be careful using them on outdoor wreaths or you may attract flies on a warm day.) How do we keep them from turning brown, however? There are various products you can buy from floral supply shops, craft outlets, and on the internet, but one of the most cost effective methods we use is to soak the pieces in Sprite, 7-Up, or most frugally, generic brand soda. We don’t recommend using diet soda – the artificial sugars may interfere with the result. Just slice the fruit, dip them in the soda, and dry on a rack. A dehydrator is most efficient, but a very low oven will work. Just be careful to keep the door slightly open or check often so the fruit doesn’t caramelize. A convection oven will speed things up. The wreath below, from 2009, shows how effective sliced fruit can be. We’ve found it pairs especially well with plaid bows.
Today’s post has been sponsored by Garden Club of the Back Bay Charter Member Kitty Winter, for many years a resident of Marlborough Street and frequent host to Garden Club events. Thank you, Kitty.
We will continue with our wreath decorating tips with a plug for green flocked wire. You may find paper covered wire in various gauges at Walmart or Amazon, but this wire is sprayed or coated with soft green velvety fuzz, making it far easier to work with – no more cut or calloused fingers. It’s available from Oasis Floral Products in 20 gauge, but check at your local supply companies for more sizes. The higher the number the smaller the wire. We take long pieces and cut them into the sizes we may need for a particular task, whether it is securing pine cones or adding more greens to the balsam bases. The color blends into the foliage and by twisting the ends, you get a secure decoration.
Tracey Cannistraro, our current co-President, is today’s Wreath of the Day Sponsor. Thank you, Tracey! Tracey also decorates, but the wreath below was made in 2013, before she joined the Club.
We feel that, in a year we are unable to provide our beautiful wreaths to the public, we should give a hint or two to help people decorate their own. Not that we want to give away ALL our secrets, but fair is fair. So here is a tool to acquire – a small pair of needle nose pliers. They range in price from a few dollars to up to $100, but there is no need to go crazy for this purpose. We even see that you can order them from Instacart, and they’re available at all hardware stores. After you tie on a few pieces of greenery, perhaps a dried flower, and a pine cone to a wired pick, you are faced with the task of getting it to attach firmly to the wreath. Yes, you can just shove it in, but if you can pluck it right out again after doing that, it’s ultimately going to fall out. Wreaths shrink as they dry out and unless you place that pick deep into the core of the wreath, the results won’t last. The needle nose pliers amplifies your hand strength so by delicately gripping the top of the pick with the tool and pushing, the items, either a single item or a “bouquet”, goes in deeply and stays put. So now you know.
Thank you Diane Schmalensee, member and generous customer, for sponsorship of today’s Wreath of the Day.
Mary Ellen Udelson has been a Garden Club of the Back Bay member since 1982, and represented the Club at the Museum of Fine Art’s Art in Bloom. She did floral arranging for St. Cecilia’s Church as well. She moved out of the Back Bay a couple of years ago, but is known at wreath making for her bold, eye-popping designs. She uses large scale elements, and often they are gold or silver. Her wreaths can be seen for miles. One customer bought a wreath each season for a country house door which sat on a hill far from the road below, and wanted her wreath to be visible to cars driving by – Mary Ellen’s work was just perfect for that. In recent years, the crown of bold design guru has descended to Carlos Soto-Chaves, whose wreath is pictured below, but in her heyday, Mary Ellen could give him a run for his money.
Thank you to our Wreath of the Day Sponsor Linda Zukowski, a Garden Club member who often delivered Mary Ellen’s wreaths around the neighborhood.
Each year, in our Wreath of the Day posts, we comment on the difficulties we experience finding decorators willing to take on orders for multiple matched wreaths. They are hard for many reasons. First, you have to find underlying base wreaths of the same size and shape, since there are many variations of color, thickness, and shape even among batches of the same sized wreaths. Then you have to gather enough material to make sure you can complete the order without running out of, say, milk weed pods. You have to put them up on easels or a wall to make sure they actually match as to placement of bows and decorations, and there is the sheer boredom of completing the task. A matched pair is one thing, a matched trio or quadruple is something else entirely. From early on, we learned we could rely on Marion Brunck, now relocated on Cape Cod, and Alice Goyert, currently on Martha’s Vineyard, to accept the orders with cheerfulness and skill. We did try to make things easier by adding a very prohibitive surcharge for matched sets of three or more. We would match the bows and bow placements and provide “coordinated” but not exact matched looks at no additional charge, and luckily most of our customers were fine with that. Alice is still able to travel up for wreath week most years, and runs a very successful wreath project for her church on the Vineyard as well.
Thank you Deborah Plunkett for your sponsorship today of our Wreath post. We encourage anyone who still wishes to do so to go to https://bostonflora.com/donate/ and make a gift in any amount.
