All hands on deck as Colonial Williamsburg prepares for holiday season

Every year, visitors from near and far come to Colonial Williamsburg to experience a taste of holiday magic.

In the Historic Area, seasonal decorations are part and parcel of December celebrations, springing up before Thanksgiving and imbuing Duke of Gloucester Street with holiday flare.

Intricate, hand-crafted wreaths and garlands have long been the heart of Colonial Williamsburg’s annual decorations. They hang on windows and doorways and along railings and fences, vibrant green with various fruits and plants and even toys to add a bit of period-appropriate color.

What the visitors don’t see is just how much work goes into the decorations, or how many hands are involved.

The process begins in the spring, when gardeners at Colonial Williamsburg grow many of the bits and bobs that will be used to decorate the wreaths and garlands at wintertime.

“We’re growing flowers in the gardens and harvesting and drying all summer long,” said Joanne Chapman, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of landscape services. “We’re collecting other materials.”

In the foundation’s landscape facilities, Chapman keeps materials in bins upon bins, stacked several rows deep nearly to the ceiling. There’s a huge, walk-in freezer for the fresh items and to store the fresh wreaths once they’re decorated.

When September rolls around, Chapman begins meeting with the team of volunteers and staff members who are responsible for creating the wreaths, garlands and other little decorations that line Duke of Gloucester Street, going over what needs to be done.

Each decorator is assigned certain sites to garnish and told how many decorations are needed for each individual structure.

While the locations of the decorations stay pretty much the same every year, there can be some variation when it comes to the decorations themselves. The volunteers making the wreaths are given creative license to come up with their own designs and ideas, as long as they stick within the guidelines when it comes to the materials they use.

Carol Fryer, who has been volunteering for two years, said that when she’s decorating a structure, she likes to think about the people who would have stayed there back in the day. This year, Fryer is doing the decorations for Bassett Hall, where the Rockefeller family used to live.

“It was very elegant, so I tend to do things more traditional,” she said.

Most of the volunteers have been making wreaths at Colonial Williamsburg for years, first as staff members selling them at the Colonial Nursery and now as volunteers in the landscape department.

“They give us so much great stuff to work with,” volunteer Barbara Ricketts said. “That’s one of the best things. When you’re doing it at home, you go, ‘Oh, I’d really like ...’ but you don’t have any. (Here) they give us so much good stuff to work with.”

Chapman and her team keep track of the decorations with spreadsheets and site printouts highlighting exactly where the wreaths and garlands needs to go. When each decoration is finished, it’s moved to a storage area, waiting to be taken out to Colonial Williamsburg and put on display.

Countless decorations are made each season, so many that it’s hard to even put a number on it. In past years, the team went through 2,500 different plain and decorated wreaths and garlands. Though that number has been reduced, there are still an eye-popping amount that go through Chapman’s team’s headquarters.

From the team that makes the wreaths to the carpenters and painters who hang them up, it’s a full-time job to keep Colonial Williamsburg looking festive.

The week of Thanksgiving, work begins on hanging the decorations, which carpentry foreman Bill Selk and his team do over the course of several days.

“On the first day, we’ll have all the plain wreaths hung on the all houses and we’ll start putting up all the roping which goes around the doors and some around the windows,” Selk said. “It’ll take us about two days to do the plain wreaths and roping. Then, depending on if they have all the decorative ornaments done, it takes about three days to put all the decorative stuff up.”

From 7 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon, a team, made up of six carpenters plus the painters who will help out, heads out to start hanging up the decorations. Much like those responsible for making the wreaths, each person is responsible for their own sites.

“We have this book which has every property on it and it lists what gets ropes and what gets wreaths,” Selk said. “I just go through it, I count up how many houses there are and how many people we have, and I just divvy it up evenly.”

According to Kenny Gulden, the manager of building trades at Colonial Williamsburg, hanging up the decor has always been the responsibility of the carpentry team, because they know where the nails need to go.

“Mainly because we deal with a lot of original homes where we have to ... keep the nails to a minimum,” he said. “They don’t want just anybody going out there putting nails in the building.”

As Chapman pointed out, nothing stops once everything is up. Throughout the season, decorations are checked nearly every day to see what might need replacing.

Whether it’s one singular apple that needs to be cycled out because someone — be it person or animal — took a bite, or because one of the fresh decorations isn’t looking so fresh anymore, the wreaths are constantly being touched up or repaired or replaced.

Putting things up again and again can get a bit redundant, Selk said, adding with a laugh that his favorite part of the process is when it’s when it’s all finished.

“The one thing I’ll say is that the customers coming by and complimenting us on how beautiful everything looks and the fact that they’re all handmade, at least the decorative pieces, I get a lot of satisfaction out of that,” he continued.

Added Gulden: “We’re a small group doing so much, that so many people enjoy coming back time and time and seeing. Some people just love to come here for Christmas, and it’s all they come here for, to look at the decorations, and it’s pretty satisfying.”

After weeks of hard work getting everything ready, Chapman makes sure she takes it all in, just like any other visitor to Colonial Williamsburg during the holidays.

“It’s a tradition for my family,” she said, “and I’m sure it is a tradition for many, to come grab a cider or hot chocolate and walk around, look at the decorations.”

Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616