Green Acre: Mantels on Her Mind

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

DAMMIT. I forgot again. 

I had planned that this year I would do something different with the holiday mantel. Something really dramatic, lush, gorgeous, and a little off-kilter. 

Not that what I’ve done looks bad; it looks great, if I say so myself. The peacock feather boa once again stretches its fluffy length across the top. There are sparkly stems and sparkly birds and sparkly lights threaded through. In short, it sparkles. 

And wasn’t I happy with myself, until this morning, chomping on a bagel, when my eye tripped across a mantel in the online pages of British design magazine Homes & Gardens that was like a ballotin of the most divine chocolates for breakfast. 

It was an asymmetrical garland of fluffy greenery hung with lights and glittery stuffs that began at the hearth and drifted up and across the mantel and up to the ceiling in most spectacular fashion.

On second thought, some of it was just a bit creepy. Something about the old blood red of the ribbons that run through it like a seeping wound, and the matching red candles. Melania would love it—watch for it in next year’s White House display.  

But the point!

Asymmetry was what I was thinking about last year, and the basics of this one are inspiring. Should I redo?

Pause, for thought. 

From Britain’s Homes & Gardens magazine, an offbeat and definitely asymmetrical mantel decoration by designer Drew Michael Scott, the “Face & Hands behind Lone Fox,” the company that showcases his design projects and offers home goods for sale.

Helpfully, Drew Michael Scott, the mantel’s designer, included a step by step for his creation. It’s all based on the use of long tree branches, bought or scavenged, that are wired together and plonked in a basket to the side of the hearth. 

The intertwined branches are then artfully bent across the wall above the mantel, stretched toward the ceiling, and “just hammered it to the wall with a few small nails.” *

That said, my excess of wisteria branches would be brilliant.

There! You’ve created the frame. Now add fake and real greenery and berries. Scott, who goes by the moniker Lone Fox, uses great poofs of frilly asparagus fern and tucks in white amaranthus flowers, which he says gives the effect of “white snow or icicles.”  

Then come ribbons, sparkly baubles and lights.

The key to this mantel, he says, is mixing faux and real so everything overall looks real in the end. 

My gardening philosophy, exactly. 

Crate and Barrel has a simpler take on the asymmetrical mantel concept, with a 15’ faux cypress garland that can start at one end and drape quite fabulously across to pool on the floor at the other end—and be trotted out year after year. They show it studded with red berries (presumably fake), which is quite striking. 

You might mix in other greens (Trader Joe’s is my go-to for that), letting them dry in place, use a ton of baby’s breath for a snowy explosion, and certainly take it all up a notch with lights. 

Of course, if you enjoy twice-daily vacuuming you can buy a fresh garland and pluck berries and flowers from the garden. Dried hydrangeas would be good.

For more unusual and dramatic mantel designs, check out Pinterest. 

If you’re a “less is less” sort, polish an apple. Set it on the mantel. Done.

Less is more is fine, more or less.

Martini time.

*A few small nails is all you need to tie a garland across a mantel: Just wire the garland to the nails. I suspect you’ll need more than a few small nails to support a large construct crawling up the wall—best to consult someone who knows his/her way around a hammer. I have My Prince, but I don’t share.