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Holiday Red

holiday reds.

Red is the color of the holidays, and I will read the following quote from famed British flower arranger Constance Spry. In her book How to do the Flowers, published in 1953, she wrote:

"Red flowers have great popular appeal and are praised for their cheerfulness and gaiety. Striking and beautiful effects may be obtained by mixing together strongly contrasting shades of red and by adding red fruits and green leaves. Suppose one wants to achieve a brilliant note of red in a room, say on a cold day in a north room; it is possible to get brilliance without hardness by putting together many shades and tones of red-rose, vermilion, crimson, magenta-and, in the result, to make a strong warm effect without harshness-something comparable in color, as someone once said, to the blast of a trumpet."


  • For holiday dinners, save money as well as space by using small vases with an odd number of red carnations with pieces of evergreen cut from the garden.
  • Or soak some oasis and place it in a low bowl and cover the foam entirely with small sprays of evergreen. Nestle one, three, or five short-stemmed red flowers among the greens.
  • A single bloom cut from a poinsettia plant, with a short stem in a low vase, is also a space saving and inexpensive decoration for the holiday dinner table.


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