The home: This large and welcoming brick home near the Rideau River brims with antiques from far and wide, including family heirlooms.
The stylist: Joanne Plummer, Mill Street Florist
The theme: Nature, from blooming orchids to rolls of birch bark, has been used to provide a continuous Christmas theme amid the owners’ eclectic collection of antiques.
Key features: In the high-ceilinged entryway, some three dozen tiny vases containing gloriosa lilies, red hypericum and other delicate blooms dot surfaces, including that of a round marble table from Italy that’s topped with an intricately carved 19th–century Chinese ivory box.
The great room has been outfitted with a “forest” of balsam trees in planters, birch limbs, rolls of birch bark on the floor, and, for a splash of colour, ilex berries.
On a side table in the kitchen stands a six-foot Biedermeier-style Christmas tree: it’s made of concentric circles of everything from magnolia leaves and Carolina sapphire to B.C. cedar and orchids. The tree is just the thing for this massive kitchen with its soaring ceiling.
The dining room table, with its heirloom place settings, has been decorated with a classical orb arrangement of red freedom roses, skimmia and elegant Vanda orchids.
Quotable: “I want people to realize that just because it’s Christmas, that doesn’t mean you have to use red or green,” Plummer says of a “beautiful Christmas arrangement in yellow” she made for the den.
Turn any clear container into a festive statement with a mix of mini lights and pine cones.
Bringing it home: A seasonal lantern
Start with a layer of white spruce and tamarack pine cones in a candle urn or any other clear container. Feed in a string of battery-powered LED twinkle lights together with more cones. Top with a layer of cones.
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