Brick Colonial Holiday Entry

Two stone urns, an arched brick surround, and three weeks until the family arrived.

Brick is a hard thing to decorate against. It is already busy, already warm, and it will fight anything red that is even slightly the wrong red. So we worked with it instead of over it: cypress for height, magnolia and gold-brushed foliage picking up the ochre in the brickwork, and pine and cones for the texture that reads from the street.

The poinsettia sits low on purpose. The door is the best thing about this entry (deep stained wood under a leaded arch) and the job of everything around it is to frame that, not compete with it. Garland on the carriage lights closes the composition at eye level, and the two urns repeat so the whole thing reads as one gesture rather than two pots.

Installed in an afternoon. It came down in January and went back to spring in March.