Tips for a Simple, Beautiful Fall Table - 405 Magazine

Tips for a Simple, Beautiful Fall Table

For your Thanksgiving decor, use what you have or look to nature to finish out your tablescape.

Two pumpkins, one green and one white, sit on wooden table next to an elevated platter with a fig tart and a fall grass hanging off the table.

Photo provided.

For your Thanksgiving decor, use what you have or look to nature to finish out your tablescape.

The key to adorning your Thanksgiving table is not to put pressure on yourself to make everything perfect.

“You’ll enjoy yourself more if you relax,” said Kris Balaban, co-owner of flower shop A Date With Iris.

Mix and match your own containers, and use items that mean something to you, like an heirloom base, she suggested. If you bring one to A Date With Iris, they’ll fill it with flowers that people don’t normally associate with Thanksgiving such as the peonies from Chile that they have in shop right now.

“I love bold, hot colors,” she said.

Todd Kyker, one of the main floral designers at Trochta’s Flowers and Garden Center, said people who want to do their own centerpieces can start with things found in nature, such as burlwood or an interesting piece of driftwood from a lake.

Clean white bowls are set in a line along a wooden table with wintry greens decorating the center of the table.
Photo provided.

Take the piece of wood home, clean it up and then start incorporating it into your tablescape. Add some miniature pumpkins or preserved fall leaves from your local craft store, Kyker said. (Or use beautiful fall leaves from your own trees if you don’t intend for your table to last as long, he noted.) Add dried materials like grasses and pods, or even use nandina berries, in the log’s crevices and around it. Use the log as a focal point and then work with its points of interest.

“Stagger it so that it isn’t super ordered,” he said. “Nature isn’t necessarily already ordered. You’re really just trying to create a balance and not make it look matchy-matchy.”

You can also set flowers throughout the centerpiece, some with the stems cut off, or incorporate votives around the table.

A variety of winter plants decorate a wooden surface.
Photo provided.

For a more contemporary look, use a collection of vases of varying heights down the table, Kyker said.

He suggests adding simple flowers or branches in containers of mercury glass or gold, warm tones or ceramics — vases that reflect fall colors.

While Trochta’s handles table arrangements for many, Kyker said people can create their own using found objects. And by keeping the decor low enough or simple enough, you can enjoy the conversation at the table without having to move a beautiful centerpiece.