The holiday decorations look tired when you pull them out of storage. So, you buy a wreath and a couple poinsettias, place red tapers in the candlesticks and add the few ornaments you bought on vacation to the tree. On family light-up night, everyone says it looks great, but by New Year’s the wreath is tinder, the poinsettias have dropped their leaves and kitty has claimed multiple ornaments. Experience says we finish the season with a whimper rather than a roar.
Is an expensive shopping spree the only pepper-upper available? Not necessarily, says floral designer Gwen Martin of Sewickley’s Sugar Flowers and Leaves. Instead, consider reviving your décor and extending its life with simple things found close to home, including live flowers you can easily replace throughout the season.
Holiday Decorations with Gwen Martin
“Start shopping in your own backyard,” says Gwen, who follows her own advice. At her sprawling historic home, she uses cuttings from surrounding evergreens along with foraged pinecones and interesting twigs sprayed gold as the foundation for stunning holiday display.
This all-natural approach to holiday decorations provides the backdrop for decorated mantels, archways, tables, and staircases. Then Gwen adds pops of color—festive hues of fresh roses, cyclamen, orchids, or hellebores, all easily snagged at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or at the local florist. Figurines and vintage ornaments coexist as eye candy. And when the blooms start drooping, a trip to your preferred floral provisioner provides a quick fix.
Gwen uses tall flowers in sparkly or brightly colored vases to dress up her mantels and tables or even as stand-alone decorations on the floor. She intersperses smaller flowers, hidden in glass containers or water tubes, among the garlands. If you don’t feel like spraying the greens, it’s okay to buy artificial, she says: “I’m not afraid to mix real and fake. A live garland has a life of only a week and a half.”
Creativity in the Home
Gwen’s mother, an interior designer, fueled her creativity, and her father, a chemical engineer, inspired her to look to nature for decorations. Her first career, in printing, sparked a love of color. She helped a few close friends with wedding flowers but didn’t get serious about design until her husband David’s job took the family, including Chase and Sloane, now 16 and 20, to China for three years. There, with time on her hands, she studied up and designed her first big wedding—in purple, she recalls.
When they returned to Pittsburgh, the Martins knew little about the house they bought except that it once was part of a working farm. A small boiler fire required Gwen to stay home and supervise restorations, but also gave her time to research the property’s history.
Longtime Sewickley residents, including a woman who lived in the house as a child, recalled it once had a greenhouse and lovely gardens. With a nod to the past, Gwen joined a garden club, where she “quadrupled” her floral education. “I am not the first owner of this house who has a great love of gardening,” she says.
Lavish Celebrations, A Love of the Home
When celebrations resumed post-pandemic, her husband suggested she start a business, and her hobby evolved into a full-service floral design shop. She prides herself on sourcing flowers locally. Instead of ordering from large Ecuadorian flower farms, each Wednesday she picks up flowers she has ordered online from the Greater Pittsburgh Flower Collective at a coffee shop in Millvale.
Gwen decorates lavishly, but mostly for her extended family’s enjoyment. She doesn’t entertain formally except for an annual holiday “champagne brunch-coffee” for the moms from her son’s school.
The house looks different each year, although she purchases little other than flowers. “We all have too much stuff,” she says. Instead, she moves her decorations from room to room. “Mix it up,” she suggests, “and if you’re unsure, ask a friend with a fresh perspective to help you reimagine an inviting display.” With flowers, of course.
“Flowers feed a part of your soul where you create something you feel happy about, not just for yourself, but for others who appreciate it,” Gwen says. That’s holiday spirit.
Gwen’s Tips for Holiday Decorations, Abridged
- Shop from your yard. Then go to the store to supplement what you need.
- Use tree cuttings. Tips of evergreens or holly can be used on a mantel. Placed alone in a crystal vase, greens can make a simple but beautiful statement.
- Collect interesting twigs and branches. Some of the most elegant mantel decorations are simple branches sprayed silver or gold with berries or small artificial birds clipped on.
- Spray-paint pinecones, seedpods, or nuts and hang them on the tree.
- Use family heirlooms like your grandmother’s vases to create new memories. What’s old is new again and looks lovely.
- Buy unadorned live wreaths and decorate them yourself. Periodically spray with water to keep them fresh.
- Mix real with fake. A real garland doesn’t last long, so buy an artificial one and add fresh greens and florals you can replace if necessary.
- Make your own decorations. Your kids or grandkids will love seeing the wreath or gingerbread house they helped make on display. There are plentiful instructions online.
- Don’t forget about fruit. For a bright display, fill a bowl with whole pomegranates or clove-dotted oranges surrounded by large greens and leaves.
- Create pops of color. I love to mix my vintage my ornaments in crystal bowls with other brightly colored balls and just set them around the house.
Story by Susan Flemings Morgan / Photography by Erin Kelly / Styling by Taylor Goss
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