The Maben Home & Garden Club invited Janet Dean of the Mathiston Florist to give a program in October, and did she ever deliver!
As you can see from the accompanying photos, she brought many items from her florist shop in Mathiston along with a variety of fall flowers and cut limbs from her yard to create for the Garden Club members and guests a variety of arrangements for every part of a home. She showed the group how to decorate for fall all over the house starting with your mailbox, for which she cut a sunflower wreath at the bottom and draped it over a mailbox, wired it in place below and spread the vine branches back over the box to anchor it in place.
Then she arranged a variety of colorful fall leaves on limbs from gum, maple, crepe myrtle and other trees from her yard into an attractive urn to place beside the front door. She added zebra grass and other cuttings to complete the look. The sunflower wreath and the urn arrangement can be seen in the photo featuring the angel.
Next she took a long wooden container and placed small pumpkins and moss balls surrounded by buckeyes, or you could use acorns or pine cones, to complete the low arrangement for a coffee table. She then set a pumpkin (see picture) on a bed of smilax with berries and surrounded it with the smaller fall objects she brought, including silk or natural-colored fall leaves from her shop. She suggested that if we were going to use a pumpkin on a table to be sure to put a plate or mirror beneath it to protect the wood from the natural pumpkin when it begins to mature.
She had purchased from the Maben auction house a black wire branched container that held six glass votive candle holders. To demonstrate different ways to use the container, she removed the glass votives and set the pumpkin arrangement she had already made in the center of the black container. Then she removed the pumpkin and set a water-soaked oasis in middle and placed fern fronds around the edges, a tall leafy lucadentrum in the center, surrounded by coral-colored roses, a deep red cabbage rose, varied mums in fall colors, and then purple statice and hyperium berries.
Next she lifted the whole oasis arrangement and set it on a tall black wrought-iron candle holder in the center of the original votive holder. Then she began to build it taller by adding sweet peas, larkspur, cattails, summer aster, goldenrod, and glycerin preserved fall leaves draping down. The whole process was very impressive. The photo with cattails resulted when she then placed the oasis arrangement into a labeled "Garden" container.
Finally, she showed the group how to make some smaller arrangements to be used in bedrooms and bathrooms, such as cloth-covered toilet tissue rolls with a stem in the middle hole that resemble pumpkins that can be placed on the bathroom counter, or the amber jar with cabbage rose and chrysanthemums next to a darling fall-colored angel that she sells in her shop. She also brought various containers like metal pumpkins and other decorations that can also be purchased in her shop. One of the highlights of her presentation was the large permanent arrangement that she brought from her shop that could be used on a buffet table for Thanksgiving. It featured silk sunflowers and hydrangeas, artificial gourds, a cornucopia basket, and the "Thankful" ribbon bow at the base.
The program was very well received by the members and guests in attendance at Trace-Way Restaurant.
