The Garden Club of the Back Bay wishes you all a joyous and Merry Christmas!

We had an interesting comment from one of our recipients this year, who needed a pair of matched decorated wreaths for her front doors. In the past, the bows had been placed either on top, or at the clock positions we refer to as 10 and 2, but those choices were made by the decorator and were not specified by the client, or by our in-house procedures. This year she received a matched pair with both bows at the 10 o’clock position. We thought the wreaths were beautiful, but she thought a mistake had occurred, and was wily enough to rehang one wreath so the bow was where she wanted it to be, although we believe some of the decorations may now look as if they are upside down. Our decorating team exchanged emails and decided we didn’t think matching ribbon positions  in this way is wrong or unattractive, but of course we made a note to make our distraught customer’s wreaths differently in future.  What do you think? Should all matched pairs be done with bows on top, or as mirror image?

This was a year of aches and pains, accidents, colds, you name it. One of our most prolific decorators had shoulder surgery and was unable to work, although she came in and did her best to help in other ways.  Our past co-chair of the Twilight Garden Party helped Sunday and Monday, had cataract surgery Tuesday, and was back on Wednesday. A couple were suffering from bad colds, and another worked with an arm brace due to a stretched ligament (total rest for one month recommended.) Another designer was only able to come for one day, but her work that day was exquisite, and we hope to have her back in full swing next year.

We have three basic choices for decorated wreath designs: all natural, designer’s choice, and glamorous glitz. The first is rather self-explanatory, although even then, we often take the liberty of dusting the natural cones and pods with a bit of glitter dust or a dull gleam of antique gold paint, tastefully applied, to “lift” the design. The third is also obvious – give me glam and lots of it. But the second category, “designer’s choice”, is a bit more complicated. We try to explain to our volunteers that designer’s choice doesn’t mean going off the rails. If we don’t know the client, we try to stay within parameters of traditional design. In the case of the wreath below, the designer chose to steer to a rose pink range, and while the wreath was undeniably beautiful, we had no idea if the buyer would be put off by the scheme. Luckily we were able to take a picture and send it, in advance,  with a sincere promise that if she didn’t care for the interpretation we would be glad to substitute another look of her choice. The response was quick – her house was an explosion of pink, she loved pink, and loved the wreath!