Celebrate the Nature of Christmas at Biltmore
The holiday season comes alive with “The Nature of Christmas”, the 2013 theme at The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. We talk with the designers behind this year-long project and take a tour through the grandest of rooms.
The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., has long been a destination spot for garden lovers, offering them the chance to stroll through acres of formal and informal outdoor gardens designed by renowned American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. During Biltmore’s annual Christmas celebration, the beauty of nature is brought indoors, dazzling guests with rooms filled with holiday greenery and floral displays.
This yuletide tradition dates back to 1895, when Biltmore’s founder George Vanderbilt first welcomed friends and family to the newly built Biltmore House on Christmas Eve. This year, guests will see 56 holiday trees throughout Biltmore House, including a 35-foot-tall Fraser fir in the Banquet Hall. Each tree is intricately designed and hand-decorated by members of Biltmore's floral design team. Miles of fresh garland, holiday wreaths and nearly a thousand red and white poinsettias are also on display.
“Each year our floral design team decorates several rooms in Biltmore House according to a theme. This year it’s ‘The Nature of Christmas,’ which is especially fitting for garden motifs. The team is made up of eight designers, and each of them selects one of the main rooms in Biltmore House to decorate. She works with the theme and plans all year for her room, selecting the type of ornaments, fabrics and colors to use,” says LeeAnn Donnelly, Biltmore senior public relations manager.
During the Christmas celebration, Biltmore's floral arranging and gardening experts will also be conducting free daily seminars at A Gardener's Place gift shop. Topics include caring for Christmas plants and decorating with wreaths.
Christmas at Biltmore runs through Jan. 14, 2014. To learn more, visit www.biltmore.com.
The Banquet Hall
Floral designer: Simone Bush
For Simone Bush and other members of Biltmore’s Floral Design Team, Christmas is much more than a holiday—it’s a masterpiece that requires a year of planning. Each team member is assigned the decorative design for several rooms in Biltmore House, including one of the grand rooms on the first floor. This year, Bush has taken on the crown jewel of Christmas at Biltmore: the lofty Banquet Hall that traditionally features a 35-foot fresh-cut Fraser fir as its centerpiece.
To envision the decorative elements needed to bring the Banquet Hall to life, Bush drew on the idea of families coming together at the holidays, and the wonderful ways in which their joy might be expressed. “I thought of Mr. Vanderbilt reading stories to his nieces and nephews by the fireplace when he first opened Biltmore House on Christmas Eve 1895. Everything was so elegant, and yet there was a sense of warmth and whimsy, too, with a house full of excited children waiting for Santa Claus.,” she says.
With the notion of whimsy in mind, Bush used decorative elements meant to delight all ages, including enormous ribbons in stripes, plaids and polka dots, huge paper chains, and a brightly-colored Harlequin figure perched atop the towering tree. While less formal than some interpretations of Christmas, Bush’s design is elegantly rendered in traditional shades of red, green and cream.
The Library
Floral designer: Gloria Brank
For more than 20 years, Gloria Brank has been decorating Biltmore House for Christmas. In her role as floral department supervisor, she’s also instrumental in organizing the design and installation of Christmas at Biltmore displays across the entire estate and has decorated almost every room in Biltmore House. This year, she’s once again decorating the library, a room that’s always been one of her favorites.
The inspiration for her floral display came from above, as she gazed upward at the beautiful library ceiling canvas painted by Pelligrini. Called The Chariot of Aurora, the painting symbolizes the coming of dawn. “As I thought about our theme, I wanted to interpret ‘nature’ as the meaning of Christmas, with all the angels and cherubs announcing the birth of Christ,” Brank says.
The Library
Floral designer: Gloria Brank
Focusing on the rich hues of the painting and the warm reds and dark walnut tones of the library, Brank created an opulent, Renaissance-style decorative scheme that adds subtle layers of color and texture throughout the room. Large blue-and-white pots, a tribute to Ming Dynasty goldfish bowls and some the oldest pieces in the Biltmore collection, are filled with fresh floral arrangements in nontraditional colors drawn from the ceiling.
“So much of what we do is during the planning stages,” Brank says, describing the year-long creative process that goes into each floral designer’s holiday display. “We walk through Biltmore House in January while the decorations are still in place and we start thinking about the following year. We begin to get a core of an idea, keeping it in mind while we’re thinking about what elements we have and what we might need to purchase or create.”
The Tapestry Gallery
Floral designer: Kyla Dana
Biltmore floral designer Kyla Dana kept things simple this year as she prepared for Christmas at Biltmore. As a new member of the team, she admits that it can be a bit intimidating to be responsible for both the Billiard Room and Tapestry Gallery, but she also finds it thrilling to create designs for such large spaces.
“I really identified with the theme this year. I love incorporating natural elements into my designs, so the Nature of Christmas is perfect for me,” she says.
Because the Tapestry Gallery is a long and narrow space, decorating the room was a challenge, and Dana had to be careful not to hide any of the tapestries with her designs. She was particularly inspired by the hand-painted mantels above each fireplace in the gallery, choosing to highlight the deer, birds and other animals in each scene with fresh plants and greenery rather than flowers. During the spring and summer, Dana collected branches that she wove together into a natural trellis, which serves as a rustic backdrop for the traditional Spanish nativity scene assembled in the Tapestry Gallery each Christmas. She also looked to Edith Vanderbilt for inspiration, echoing the subdued metallic colors and curving “S” shapes in the glamorous Boldini painting of Edith that hangs at the far end of the room near the library.
The Music Room
Floral designer: Lucinda Ledford
Lucinda Ledford’s affection for roses has earned her the name “Rose Queen” from her team members in Biltmore’s floral department, but that’s okay with her. “I guess I’m just not a poinsettia person, nor an amaryllis person, either. That’s why I went in for so many roses,” she says.
The Music Room
Floral designer: Lucinda Ledford
As the newest designer on the floral team, this is Ledford’s first opportunity to participate in Biltmore’s holiday decorating process. “It was wonderful to partner with Susan Partain on the Music Room,” she says, referring to another floral designer who’s been part of the team for many years. “She was so knowledgeable, and it was a great learning experience. We took our theme from The Holly and The Ivy Christmas carol and worked in lots of natural elements, with plenty of reds and greens.”
To add elements that worked with the Nature of Christmas theme, Ledford and Partain used fresh greenery cut from trees and shrubs on the estate, just as the Vanderbilts and their staff might have done in 1895. Ledford also used floral touches composed of dark oxblood red roses. She completed the warm, welcoming look by including a candy tray replicating sweets that were popular in the late 1800s. Ledford searched online for different candies from that era, and then printed the wrappers for her Victorian-era candy bars so the treats would look authentic.
“When guests come through in awe, it lets you know you did it right,” Ledford says about her first Christmas at Biltmore decorating experience.
The Winter Garden and Entrance Hall
Floral designer: Mary Quirk
Once you pass through the Vestibule and enter Biltmore House, you walk into an indoor winter forest created by floral designer Mary Quirk. She is responsible for the Entrance Hall and the Winter Garden this year, two areas that flow into each other.
To create the feeling of a winter forest, Quirk placed deciduous trees in urns and added gold and silver ornaments for a formal touch. Other natural elements include a grapevine tree with a fresh arrangement at its base and a large grapevine ball tied with sheer gold fabric. Quirk also twined Asian honeysuckle through her garlands to give the greenery more body and flowing curves.
The Winter Garden and Entrance Hall
Floral designer: Mary Quirk
Keeping true to its original use as a conservatory for exotic plants, the Winter Garden always features profuse displays of poinsettias. Quirk also added more deciduous trees and holly trees with berries to emphasize natural elements and bring the outdoors in. “I grew up cutting pods and branches with my grandmother and spray painting them, and we did some of that for Biltmore this year. I learned a lot, and I love having all this vast estate available to us as a resource,” she says.
The Morning Salon
Floral designers: Lynn Truskolaski & Donnie Andrews
Floral team members Lynn Truskolaski and Donnie Andrews teamed up on the Morning Salon this year, which was an interesting challenge because the room was undergoing a renovation and didn’t reopen until the beginning of October. That meant they had to put together their final plans quickly, but they also were able to gain a new perspective on the space.
“The sheers were off the windows, so it was like we were bringing the view inside, which was perfect for the Nature of Christmas theme,” says Andrews.
The Morning Salon
Floral designers: Lynn Truskolaski (pictured) & Donnie Andrews
They started with red and gold colors to pick up the tones of the new ceiling tiles and brought in nursery plants such as deciduous holly and large mixed greenery wreaths. Other natural touches include acorns, oak leaves and twig bundles incorporated into garlands twined around lamp posts. The room’s shallow fireplace was dressed up with an antique brass container filled with natural plants and twig branches. More live woodland plants spill over toward the Winter Garden, helping to keep the two areas cohesive in their look and feel.
Truskolaski and Andrews also worked on designing the Biltmore’s Smoking Room and Gun Room, The rooms are part of the Bachelors’ Wing primarily used by George Vanderbilt’s male guests, so they kept the colors and styles masculine and subtle, using frosty tones rather than bright glittery ones.
“This is our third year of working together as a team,” says Andrews. “The planning, the execution, and seeing it all come together—we love every minute of it.”