Celebrate Nature's Bounty With This Seasonal Pear Tablescape

I love designing with what the season has to offer. Autumn is alive with rich color and texture, offering up a harvest of branches, leaves, pods, berries, and floral. But why stop there? Why not include Christmas fruits and vegetables in a pear tablescape.

Maybe you're like me and you find produce to be as visually beautiful as any flower. Pears, in particular, really get to me. You don't even need to add them to anything else to make an arrangement. Just sit them on a plate, add a little cluster of berries on top, and you have a beautiful still life (and a delicious-sounding fruit salad). Put down a place card, and you're all set.

Another option: Snuggle in a few grapes and pears among the seasonal blooms, and you have a feast for the eyes. All you need to add these fruits to the arrangement are sticks, wires, tape, and clippers. This style design works best when arranged in a container filled with floral foam. Remember to thoroughly soak the foam before starting your designing.

Adding fruits and vegetables to your pear tablescape is a great way to add interest, texture, and color, and helps your floral material go farther. It's economical, too, since you can eat part of your arrangement after your dinner party.

For this project, I am using the most delicious pears I have ever eaten: The Favorite® Royal Riviera® Pears. They are so sweet and juicy that I find it necessary to wrap a piece of tape around the skewer about 1 ½ inches down from the top. This works to stop the pear from sliding any further down the skewer.

If you are using less expensive fruit for the centerpiece, then you can use a larger stick and not worry about preserving the integrity of the produce!

Insert the skewer into the foam at an angle. Place heavy or hanging fruit at the base of your arrangement so that it has the support of the container to rest on.

You can use some of the fruit now before adding your seasonal foliage and flowers or leave areas open so that you can easily place your skewered fruit in as you go.

For cluster fruit, such as grapes, make a U-pin from a piece of wire and hook it around the stem of the grapes. Depending on the size of the cluster, you can wrap the ends of the wire together for more support.

Another one of my favorite and unexpected additions is using succulents as cut flowers. It's as easy as it looks! Just cut the top part of a succulent that is getting too tall and needs to be pruned, and insert a skewer into the base of the stem. This will last for weeks and can even be re-rooted!

You can also use small potted succulents.

A beautiful display of nature's bounty like this can effortlessly go from the mantle to the dinner table as a centerpiece.

It also can dress up the dessert table. Doesn't it look right at home nestled among the pears, cheeses, and jams? A feast for the eyes as well as the palate!