FLOWER NOV•DEC 2020
HOUSE l GARDEN l LIFESTYLE
CELEBRATE The Season in Style
PHOTO BY CATHERINE NGUYEN
Pattern featured: Golden Elegance
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NOVEMBER•DECEMBER 2020
Contents FEATURES
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Christmas in Colour
Each December, garden designer Butter Wakefield transforms her West London home into a candy-colored jewel box of Christmas cheer
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A Provençal Christmas
For interior decorator Alix Rico, every day is Christmas Day when you live and celebrate with the things you love most
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Remembering Julia
Julia Reed was the life of any party but loved nothing more than giving one. Her dear friend and business partner Keith Meacham shares memories and a few of the entertaining lessons she learned from Julia over the years
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Winter Wonderland
PHOTO BY CATHERINE NGUYEN
A trio of talents put their creativity on display, conjuring up sparkling holiday decor throughout a beautifully appointed Raleigh home using an abundance of magnolia, sparkling white lights, and fresh flowers
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“Just living isn’t enough,” said the butterfly. “One must also have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” –HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
ON THE COVER: At her West London home, garden designer Butter Wakefield brings unexpected color to Christmas. Here she arranged
a clutch of pink anemones in pieces from her beloved collection of pink lusterware. Photographed by Clive Nichols
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Decorate: Flowers & Q&A • Gift Guide • Entertain
in Bloom The designer in front of a charming vignette with some of her favorite silver and Christmas decorations
DECORATE: FLOWERS
Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of K Wakefield Designs THE CHATTANOOGA-BASED FLORAL TALENT CREATES ARRANGEMENTS WITH FAMILIAR CHRISTMAS FLOWERS AND ABUNDANT GREENERY, ALONG WITH A HOST OF SUPPORTING PLAYERS THAT SET THE STAGE FOR HOLIDAY CHEER FROM THE ENTRY HALL TO THE DINING ROOM Produced by Alice Welsh Doyle • Photography by David Hillegas
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in Bloom FLOWERS
“I was inspired by Herend’s Chinese Bouquet china pattern that my grandmother, mother, sister, and I use year-round, but its greenand-white palette makes it a natural choice for Christmastime.” –KAKHI WAKEFIELD
MATERIALS LIST
Gilded antlers ‘Green Trick’ dianthus Amaryllis Mix of greenery (curly pine, cypress, goldtipped cedar, magnolia, aucuba, galax leaves) Poinsettia Ornamental kale Spray roses ‘Green Lemonade’ roses Parrot tulips Bells of Ireland Snapdragons Veronica Viburnum Lisianthus Double ranunculus Queen Anne’s lace
Turn the page for step-bystep instructions to make this arrangement >
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in Bloom ENTERTAIN
Visions of Sugar Plums WHEN SANTA CLAUS COMES TO PALM BEACH, HE DONS PINK, THE PERFECT PASTEL HUE FOR A SUN-KISSED GINGERBREAD-HOUSE DECORATING PARTY CO-HOSTED BY PALM BEACH LATELY AND LOVESHACKFANCY By Cathy Still McGowin • Photography by Shea Christine Photography
B
Mercury glass Christmas trees, nutcrackers, and vintage glass bottles holding pink garden roses mingle with gingerbread houses awaiting decoration. RIGHT: The store window at LoveShackFancy was decorated by Flower Love Palm Beach.
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eth Aschenbach and Danielle Norcross, the sister duo behind the lifestyle brand Palm Beach Lately, love the beach, their children, and the holidays. So when Rebecca Hessel Cohen, the founder and creative director of the boutique LoveShackFancy, opened their doors at The Royal Poinciana Plaza in sunny Florida just a few weeks before Christmas, the sisters welcomed them to their hometown by co-hosting a holiday party brimming with all things Palm Beach. “LoveShackFancy is an adult version of a little girl’s childhood fantasy,” says Beth of the brand’s clothing and tabletop designs.
Each December, celebrated garden designer BUTTER WAKEFIELD transforms her West London home into a candy-colored jewel box of Christmas cheer By KIRK REED FORRESTER • Photographed by CLIVE NICHOLS
DECORATING THE HOUSE FOR CHRISTMAS IS A
little like baking with small children—it sounds like a tender, beautiful experience but in reality demands the mental fortitude of a Navy Seal and a really good broom. There’s a lot of nostalgia, tradition, and expectation wrapped up in those nativity sets and tangled bundles of Christmas lights. Delivering the goods year after year can be daunting and, for even the merriest among us, take on a formulaic rigidity. So, what a thrill to witness the way Butter Wakefield, the award-winning, Baltimore-born, London-based garden designer, decks her own halls for the holidays, in a wild, joyous mash-up of color. Like the Wise Men departing from Bethlehem, Wakefield shows us an alternative route. “I am properly obsessed with Christmas decorating,” says Butter from her home in the Shepherd’s Bush neighborhood of West London. “I long for the day when my four children say, ‘Mommy, don’t worry about the presents, just go totally overboard on the decorations and the food.’ ” While her children (all grown up now) may not have reached that conclusion just yet (“they still love their hand-stitched needlepoint stockings
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In the drawing room, a vase of paperwhites and large arrangements “jammed with greenery” are among the designer’s favorites. LEFT: One of Butter’s kissing balls in the foyer PREVIOUS PAGES: Pink anemones in her beloved lusterware • Butter and her Border Terrier Wafer in front of her home, Ravenscourt Park
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At the entry, topiaries, foliage, and flowers, including paperwhite, cyclamen, and alyssum, are corralled in urns and pots made by artisans in L’Isle sur la Sorgue in France. OPPOSITE: A fresh cone-shaped topiary flocked with doves and white flowers stands in lieu of a traditional Christmas tree in the foyer. An 18th-century painted putto keeps vigil atop a Louis XV giltwood stool. A 19th-century oil painting by Henri Daudin hangs above a Directoire recamier.
For interior decorator Alix Rico, every day is Christmas Day when you live and celebrate with the things you love most Styling and text by MARGARET ZAINEY ROUX Photography by SARA ESSEX BRADLEY
An 18th-century giltwood Madonna basks in the glow of white lights and candles on gilt altar sticks, all set in a garland of evergreens peppered with lilies, garden roses and tulips. OPPOSITE, LEFT: In the living room, the deconsecrated giltwood tabernacle, affixed to the wall like a console table, is one of many that was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and lovingly resurrected by Alix and Paul. OPPOSITE, RIGHT: Michael the Archangel, recovered from a chapel, watches over the living room from a Louis XV walnut table.
THE FIRST TIME I EXPERIENCED CHRISTMAS IN PARIS,
I was awestruck,” recalls Alix Rico. “All along the ChampsÉlysées, hundreds of long silver rectangles dangled from the trees. They lit up the night as they bounced off the streetlights and chimed in the wind like a bell choir. The scene in our French village is much more low-key. You won’t see commercial-sized Christmas trees or a Papa Noël on every corner. You’ll find markets stocked with seasonal crafts and homemade goodies, and shop windows dressed in homey decor without any bling.” It is the simplicity and authenticity of the provincial style that has inspired Alix’s designs for decades—and not just during the holidays. For 25 years, the interior decorator and her husband, Paul, a photographer, have split their time between a 17th-century townhouse in the idyllic village of Goult and their primary residence, a 1930s cottage in New Orleans. Once described as a “cookie-cutter brick box,” the 3,300-square-foot home in their beloved Old Metairie
neighborhood was purchased in an effort to downsize. But going small evolved into something big when they embarked on a painstaking renovation to revive the suburban structure and infuse it with the easy elegance of their home away from home in the Luberon valley of Provence. The brick exterior was slathered with thick layers of a natural, sand-based stucco that ages gracefully over time, while run-of-the-mill windows and doors were replaced with arched counterparts trimmed in cast-stone case moldings. The entry was offset from the front to the side, allowing the European-style courtyard to become the street-facing focal point. Inside, bleached and pickled white oak covers the floors like a blanket, softening rooms filled with Louis XV and XVI tables, chairs, and case pieces with rich walnut stains and even richer patinas. Mirrors, lighting, and accents in chalky white, robin’s egg blue, and seafoam green gleam ever so slightly in the company of their delicate gilt details that have somehow managed to survive the centuries.
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“The greatest lesson I learned from Julia is that cooking and setting a beautiful table are really the purest expressions of friendship and love.” —KEITH MEACHAM
BELOW: Ellie, the Meachams’ Springer Spaniel, awaits guests. RIGHT: In the kitchen, small bouquets and
myrtle topiaries were placed in votives, wine rinsers, and a gentleman’s ice pail from Keith and Julia’s online shop, Reed Smythe & Company. OPPOSITE: The centerpiece urn was packed with a vibrant mix of roses, ranunculus, tulips, cedar, Queen Anne’s lace, and silvery-blue eucalyptus pods for a gatheredfrom-the-garden effect.
grateful to be invited, and it makes for a much more interesting evening if there is an element of the unknown. Julia collected people wherever she went. She had her foot in many different arenas—politics, design, food, fashion, culture—and the high-profile personalities she met along the way often ended up around her dinner table. But she always remained unpretentious. She knew that guests appreciate when you’ve made an effort, and it doesn’t have to happen in a huge house or with the finest silver, although she definitely had plenty of that. It’s about the people, the deliciousness of the food, and a friendly atmosphere, rather than about pretension or even perfection. And believe me, there were plenty of mishaps, but we reveled in the chaos. One New Year’s Eve, we co-hosted a dinner in her New Orleans apartment on Bourbon Street. As was often the case, I was acting as her sous chef and making some blinis to serve with caviar. I mistakenly used sour cream rather than heavy cream, and they puffed up like footballs—a total screwup, but we
laughed for an hour as we were getting dressed for the evening, and they actually tasted delicious. At another party in my apartment, a salon-like affair with Jon interviewing Arthur Schlesinger and Tom Brokaw for the Council on Foreign Relations, the caterers set up a round table and neglected to lock the legs. The table crashed in the middle of the discussion, sending spinach Madeleine and beef tenderloin flying all over the dining room. Julia and I ran to the kitchen, opened another bottle of Champagne, and got to work putting fresh food on the table, assuring the guests that this sort of thing happened all the time. Julia’s Madeira School motto, “Function in disaster, finish in style,” was fitting for a lot of the entertaining we did in those days. Julia left New York for the South a few years before we did, but when Jon and I decided to move our family to Nashville, we bought a house down the street from the one her mother was born in, where Julia frequently visited her grandparents as a child. We were thrilled when our new house became Julia’s home away from home, and we continued to find all sorts of reasons to plan parties and menus together, including a couple for her cookbooks. Last December we gave a holiday luncheon for Julia’s cousin, Frannie Corzine, to celebrate her leadership of the Garden Club of Nashville. While we would often arrange centerpieces and flowers ourselves, we knew for this time of year and this crowd we needed to
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JULIA REED’S MILK PUNCH “I never serve eggnog—the one holiday culinary tradition I have not been able to get behind—but I do make milk punch. With its frothy top and not-so-jaundiced color, a milk punch is prettier to look at than eggnog and is not nearly as rich and cloying, saved from that state by an effective combination of bourbon and brandy. They are especially good before a holiday lunch with, naturally, cheese straws and pecans. By evening, everyone wants a Santa hat.” —From Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialties (St. Martin’s Press, 2008)
step up our game. Fortunately my stepmother and sister, Sherry and Sarah Smythe, own an event and floral business in Greenville called Lagniappe, and they have such talent for incorporating beautiful branches and other things from the yard into more formal arrangements, even using fruits and vegetables from the kitchen. It all felt organic and made the day more special. Pulling the party together became a family affair. As usual, there was a bit of a mad rush behind the scenes. Although generally we don’t have alcohol at Garden Club functions, Julia not surprisingly put the kibosh on that plan. We mixed up some milk punch around 10 o’clock and everyone consumed their fair share while we prepared lunch. The guests arrived at noon and no one else turned it away either. I think it’s safe to say it was a very festive meeting of the ladies. One of the sweetest things about the day was seeing so many generations together—women that Julia’s mother had grown up with; women that Julia had been friends with as a child; women they had handed on to me as new friends for my life in Nashville, whose daughters are now growing up with my daughters. Julia believed the best recipe for a party is the right combination of people, and this one seemed like everything had come full circle. The greatest lesson I learned from Julia over the years is that cooking and setting a beautiful table are really the purest expressions of friendship and love. Shortly before she died, Julia wrote me a note telling me I was like the sister she’d never had, and although for a long time she may have been the teacher and I the student, how much she had learned from me, too. It was the most precious gift Julia could have given me.
For the recipe, visit flowermag.com.
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For more information, see Sources, page 70
THIS SPREAD: Sherry and Sarah drew
from Keith’s collection of antique porcelain for several of the arrangements. “Keith and Julia have always given us creative freedom to make whatever we’re feeling in the moment,” says Sarah. “We were feeling especially good that day because we had all of our favorite people around us.” Guests mingled by a fireplace draped in a garland accented with pomegranates, apples, and persimmon branches. The hostesses served a festive milk punch in emerald-green goblets from Reed Smythe & Company.
Winter Wonderland A trio of talents put their creativity on display, conjuring up sparkling holiday decor throughout a beautifully appointed Raleigh home using an abundance of magnolia, sparkling white lights, and fresh flowers Produced and written by ALICE WELSH DOYLE Photographed by CATHERINE NGUYEN
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: A cedar
garland with a magnolia swag in the foyer • Pretty packages on an antique settee • An arrangement of white amaryllis mixed with greenery, tallow berry, and viburnum branches OPPOSITE: Weston Farms Emerald Lace wreaths grace the front door.