Home for Christmas: K Wakefield Designs

Chattanooga-based floral talent Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield creates arrangements with familiar Christmas flowers and abundant greenery, along with a host of supporting players that set the stage for holiday cheer from the entry hall to the dining room
floral designer Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of K Wakefield Designs
The designer in front of a charming vignette with some of her favorite silver and Christmas decorations

“I grew up watching both my grandmothers and mother arranging flowers and enjoying the garden. I think working with flowers comes naturally to me,” says Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of Chattanooga. “And after I did a workshop with Laura Dowling at FlowerSchool New York, I was bitten by the floral bug and never looked back!”

Entry Hall

Grand green and white holiday floral design by  Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of K Wakefield Designs, placed on a round entry table in an elegantly styled foyer. A dog lies beneath the table

Percy the poodle waits by the entry table to greet holiday visitors. Find a list of materials and Kakhi’s step-by-step tutorial for this festive floral arrangement.

Sideboard

a pair of green and white arrangements in antique sterling silver on an antique sideboard

A pair of lush arrangements fill antique sterling silver drinking horns on a sideboard festooned with decorative Christmas trees.

Materials

  • Green grapes
  • Cedar
  • ‘Wild Eclair’ green spray roses
  • ‘Green Lemonade’ roses
  • Double ranunculus
  • Green parrot tulips
  • Star of Bethlehem
  • Veronica
  • Green hypericum berry
  • Variegated Italian pittosporum
  • Aucuba

Centerpiece

green and white floral arrangement featuring amaryllis by floral designer Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of K Wakefield Designs

For a gorgeously over-the-top centerpiece, Kakhi used a tureen in Herend’s Chinese Bouquet pattern.

Materials

  • Green grapes
  • Amaryllis
  • Mix of greenery (curly pine, cypress, gold-tipped cedar, magnolia, aucuba, galax leaves)
  • Poinsettia
  • Ornamental kale
  • Bells of Ireland
  • Snapdragons
  • Veronica
  • Viburnum
  • Spray roses
  • ‘Green Lemonade’ roses
  • Green parrot tulips
  • Double ranunculus
  • Queen Anne’s lace
  • Lisianthus
  • Green eryngium
  • ‘Winterbells’ hellebores

Place Setting

green and white holiday place setting with Herend’s Chinese Bouquet china

When planning her floral concept for a Christmas at home, Kakhi took a cue from the green and white palette of Herend’s Chinese Bouquet china, a family favorite. She accented each place card/bud vase with a tiny bunch of cypress.

See Kakhi’s step-by-step tutorial for a floral arrangement inspired by the china pattern.

Produced by Alice Welsh Doyle | Photography by David Hillegas | Floral design by Kakhi Huffaker Wakefield of K Wakefield Designs, kwakefielddesigns.com

This story appears in Flower magazine’s Nov/Dec 2020 issue. Subscribe to the magazine or sign up for our free e-newsletter.

Flower magazine November December 2020 cover