Watering can
A Note from the Editor
CELEBRATE: To acknowledge a significant or happy day or event with a social gathering or enjoyable activity —Oxford English Dictionary
WHEN I FIRST THINK OF THE WORD “CELEBRATE,”
I think of party hats and confetti and people dancing and imbibing festive drinks, and I might sing to myself that old standard of the same name by Kool & the Gang. But then, when I sit with the word, I’m reminded that a celebration can take many shapes. It can be quiet and reverential; it can be warm, evocative, and personal; it can commemorate; it can engage and excite . . . and even mourn. As I read through our stories, I can’t help but choke up remembering the day Keith Meacham and the late, great Julia Reed celebrated a newly minted Garden Club of Nashville president with a Christmas luncheon at Keith and Jon Meacham’s Nashville home. (See Keith’s own personal celebration of her dear friend Julia on page 56). And then from Julia’s beloved New Orleans we include a celebration of French Christmas traditions and decor with designer Alex Rico, whose house features
a quiet palette punctuated with memorable and chic holiday accents. In contrast, British flower and garden whiz Butter Wakefield has fashioned a somewhat iconoclastic holiday scheme using bright pink as a foundational color and anemones alongside evergreen with all sorts of unexpected treatments. It’s absolutely joyous. A long-standing and successful design partnership is celebrated in a conversation with Houston-based interior designers Sandy Lucas and Sarah Eilers, who commemorate their partnership in a new book, Expressive Interiors (Rizzoli, 2020), hot off the presses. And celebrating giving just the right gift, our editors have polled some of our favorite tastemakers to bring you an assemblage of shimmery holiday offerings. It is my fondest hope that these and other pieces in this, our “Celebrate”issue, will bring you comfort and joy this season.
Margot Shaw EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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FLOWER
November•December 2020
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Birmingham, AL 35253
PORTRAIT BY BECKY LUIGART-STAYNER
Love and SDG,
