Designer Firs: Decorating on a Big Budget

Oh tannenbaum, chic tannenbaum, how spiffy are your branches.

In at least a couple of hundred homes throughout the county, the family Christmas tree is dressed in its holiday finery by professionals.

For fees ranging from $500 to $20,000, teams of designing elves--otherwise employed as florists and interior designers--gussie up the living rooms, dens, dining rooms, hearths, mantels, nooks and crannies of county residences.

They haul in the fir (or fake) tree, string lights, color-coordinate decorations to home decor, create “theme” trees and statuary vignettes--even repack the whole shebang after Christmas and stow it in clients’ garages for use next year.

They have been known to incorporate clients’ favorite ornaments into the grand design, although, as one florist noted, “it doesn’t save that much money because we’ll still have labor costs.”

But money, obviously, is not the major consideration here.

“The main underlying reason someone hires me to do this is because Dad hates to shop for and bring home and put up and take down the Christmas tree,” said florist Chris Lindsay, who with a staff of a dozen designers and other helpers will decorate about 50 family trees this year.

With a fresh-flower warehouse in Costa Mesa, a gift shop in South Coast Plaza and 10 years in the business, Lindsay has gotten Santa season down to a science.

She begins ordering ornaments and booking customers in the first week of January. Decorations start to arrive at her warehouse in March, and by September it’s tough to get a spot on Lindsay’s holiday calendar. Those who do are ready to pay $600 to $750 for an 8-foot tree, strings of lights and a “start-up” collection of inexpensive glass ornaments, or, for “someone who really wants a tree done,” up to $3,000 for roughly the same size tree with ornaments upscaled to $2 to $40 apiece.

While that may sound pricey to the uninitiated, it’s comparable to charges quoted by other local florists and interior designers.

Shirley Miles of Miles-Randolf retail florists in Laguna Hills quotes the low end of her holiday handiwork at $400 for a mantel arrangement. Up in the stratosphere was a $10,000 job she and a crew put together that included a tree, garlands, wreaths, mantel arrangements, an abundance of fresh flowers and “some sort of treatment in every room of the house.”

Paul Ecke of the Black Iris florist in Laguna Beach quotes $500 for installation of a 3- or 4-foot tree with ornaments made from glass, pewter and fabric. His most expensive holiday assignment for a private residence was a $20,000 creation that took 5 days to install and included three trees, multiple wreaths and garlands, acrylic tubing with moving lights, statuary vignettes and dozens of other touches using one-of-a-kind, handcrafted ornaments.

Like Lindsay, Ecke and Miles will fill about 50 holiday orders for private clients. The differences among them, not surprisingly, are aesthetic.

“You would know a Black Iris tree if you saw one,” says Ecke. His shop’s signature flourishes include encasing tree trunks in live moss, draping fabrics through the tree and setting up statuary vignettes near the tree that are incorporated in the total effect.

Ecke, who says “every one of our trees has a theme,” counts among his clients Janice and Roger Johnson, who live in a pink stucco, cliffhanger home in Laguna Beach.

Last year, the Johnsons’ Southwest-themed silk tree was draped with paper, burgundy moire and forest green taffeta, all of which were woven throughout the tree and pillowed out to surround large papier-mache reindeer placed nearby. The installation, which Janice Johnson says cost about $2,500, also included a wreath decorated with chilies for the front gate and several indoor wreaths featuring miniature musical instruments and sheet music--a tribute to Janice’s musical training.

Of themes, florist Miles says, “we went through a period when everyone wanted a theme tree. An Oriental tree, a Hawaiian tree. That was very trendy.

“Then the big trend was to color-coordinate the tree with the home, which is something I don’t really care for. The colors tend to blend in with the home too much, and the tree doesn’t really stand out.

“You can do things to subtly blend colors,” says Miles. “Like if you have a room in mauves and pinks, you can use a cranberry red, which has blue undertones, rather than fire-engine red, which is orange-based. But you still want to pull out that deep rich color so your decorations stand out. If you put a pink-trimmed tree in a pink room, it disappears.”

Miles says her clients are “going back to a more traditional look. People are looking for much more old-fashioned-type decorations and toned-down, elegant touches.”

Lindsay agrees, although she sees that as the status quo rather than a trend.

“People around here don’t want really wild trees,” Lindsay says. “They want very conservative trees. Even if we’re not talking about your traditional red and green, we’re talking about the same basic deal but maybe in softer colors. People are not coming to me and saying, ‘We want a tree that really looks wild!’ They say, ‘I’ve changed my house and we’re now in mauves and blues--we’d like to go country French with the tree.’ ”

One of Lindsay’s clients, Carolyn DeWald, says she got “hooked” on the all-pro holiday treatment 8 years ago.

“We were having (our annual) client-friend Christmas party and I was especially busy that year with other things, so I decided to employ Chris to do my decorating,” says DeWald, who with husband Maury and their three daughters moved from Newport Beach to Pacific Palisades last year.

Also last year, and for the first time, the DeWalds had Lindsay install and decorate their tree as well as bring in the garlands and basket arrangements and smaller touches she had done for them over the years. Adding the tree took their bill from its usual $750 neighborhood to up around $2,000, DeWald says.

But saving time and energy is only part of the reason she hires Lindsay during the holidays.

“Chris’ decorating brings a real warmth to the home in a real old-fashioned, traditional kind of way,” DeWald says. “Really, I just don’t feel that I could do as well.”

While florists get the bulk of the holiday assignments, some interior designers also dabble in the action--albeit for entirely different reasons.

“It’s a courtesy for the client,” says Martha Gresham, who runs an interior design firm in San Juan Capistrano. Gresham decorates the homes of four or five clients each holiday season.

“These are people who have done their entire home with us,” she says. “These are very good clients who have used me for years. With these people I’m part of the family. I know their identities so well that we don’t really even need to discuss (the decorations).”

While declining to affix a price to the jobs she’ll do this year, Gresham, laughing, says: “It’s very time-consuming and there’s no money in it. No way do I make money on it. I do this only if I truly love you.”

Designer Dale Fahrney says he also will be Christmas decorating for four or five clients, with the jobs running from $1,500 to $5,000.

“Generally, these are clients whose homes we will be finishing close to the holidays,” says Fahrney, a past president of the International Society of Interior Designers and head of a firm in Corona Del Mar.

“We know by September or October if they’ll be in (their new home) before the end of the year, and they say, ‘Oh, we’d love it if you’d do our tree.’ For someone who has been a very good client, sometimes we’ll go back the next year.”

Fahrney and crew will be going back for a second season to the home of clients Jack and Dori de Kruif. On a recent evening, Fahrney and the de Kruifs discussed the upcoming Christmas installation in the Corona del Mar couple’s pastel-colored living room.

Fahrney pointed out where the 12-foot fir tree would go--in front of glass doors opening to a panoramic ocean view--and showed a Polaroid of last year’s color-coordinated-to-the-room, pink-ribboned tree.

“It’s not just new and store-bought” decorations, said Jack de Kruif. Then he described a few ornaments that are particularly dear to him--a fabric Santa that had belonged to his grandfather and two other sentimental Santas that had belonged to his dad.

“All three are over 100 years old,” he said.

And will they hang on the de Kruif’s snazzy Christmas tree?

“Sure, of course,” he said.

Fahrney, standing nearby, shook his head vigorously from side to side.

“No way, Jack,” said the designer, laughing. “Get your own tree.”