Best Way to Create the Festive Winter Table Setting

Evergreen foliage, berries and cones, together with candles, create a strongly architectural arrangement for a dinner party table centre display.

This elegant table setting is ideal for a winter dinner party: it uses only foliage, fir cones and seedheads that can he collected from a winter garden. It is easy to make but shows how effective just two colours – green and white – can be and how, by keeping the colour range simple, it blends in well with most colour schemes and styles of furniture – whether a sophisti­cated town setting or a simple country-style interior.

Winter foliage has its own special qualities. In this arrangement the glossy fatsia leaves reflect the soft candlelight, the variegated holly adds a central touch of brightness and the fir cones contribute texture and height. If you want to adapt the setting for a festive occasion, replace the white candles with red ones for Christmas and choose scarlet berries instead of the white fatsia seedheads shown here, or use gold candles and gold-sprayed berries at Thanksgiving.

The container for the decoration is a small antique wire basket with candle holders, and the container is lined firstly with moss and then with plastic. Any suit­ably raised container of a similar size would serve the purpose, such as a silver rose bowl, perhaps, or a plain china cake stand. You can use jars or eggcups to contain the candles and disguise them with moss.

Creating the Festive Winter Table Setting

Finger-like fatsia leaves make a glossy base for this dome-shaped arrangement, with cones and seedheads adding height. In addition to the main table setting, simple individual decorations have been made from left-over foliage and bracken twigs.

The proportions of this table centre arrangement will depend on the size and shape of your container. The aim is to make a flat collar of foliage covering the rim of the con­tainer to surround the arrangement. You will, therefore, need a container that is fairly shallow, but it does need a foot, as the collar of leaves should hang below the base to look most effective. A flat cake stand would serve the purpose just as well as the wire work dish shown here; so would a rose bowl or shallow fruit dish with a short stem.

Any suitable mixture of evergreen leaves will work, provided you mix the textures and colours well, and the leaves are not too stiff.

Constructing the Table Setting

• If the container is open-sided, first line it with moss. Then use a plastic bin liner, cut down, to provide a waterproof base. Pre-soak a block of wet oasis and place it on top of the plastic lining.

• Into the sides of the container, insert the largest leaves, in this case fatsia, to create a collar covering the rim. Then insert the sprigs of box to make a second, slightly taller tier inside the first one.
• Add the variegated holly and ivy in the centre, with the larch twigs at intervals between them. Wire two or three large cones and insert them, with some fatsia seedheads, in the centre of the arrangement. Finally place the candles in the candle holders.

Constructing the place setting

1. This simple small decoration is made from bracken stems, a few sprigs of box and one or two larch cones. Glue the bracken stems to a small cube of dry oasis. Trim them level once the glue is dry.

2. Insert the sprigs of box and the cones into the oasis, and finally tie with a couple of twists of gold braid, knotted to finish.