When my friend Barbara gave an informal dinner honoring an acquaintance from Argentina, she planned to have some fun and serve her guests typical North American hot dogs and hamburgers. When her pal Kai Loebach, an L.A. caterer and event planner heard about the menu, he had a one-word reaction: No!

Then Kai stepped in and took over.     

Barbara’s dining room is elegant and modern with a square, blond heirloom dining table inset with metal dots. So she always likes to keeps things casual by using placemats and letting the gorgeous wood show.

At  the flower market, Kai [photo, right] bought low greenery plus agapanthus (African lilies), tall flowers with small white blossoms.   “It’s a very wide table,” Kai explains, “so it’s not good for cross conversation. That’s why you can have tall things that block [the ability to speak to someone on the other side].”

Using Barbara’s low-sided, shallow crystal vases, Kai assembled a little container-garden at the center of the table, mixing in silver and white tapers to coordinate with Barbara’s gray linen placemats  and French flatware with frosted Lucite handles.  He also arranged showpiece flowers with white casablanca lilies [above] for the dining room buffet.

To hold arrangements in place, pliable young willow roots were submerged in the water, producing a natural, almost basket-like effect behind the glass. “Any kind of foliage, with cranberries, kumquats or even small fruit can be used to keep flowers in place in the same way,” Kai notes.

A tuft of live moss filled one of the small vases (bottom, right).  The larger arrangement (center) includes lamb’s tongue leaves, wild thyme and artichokes.

As for the menu, Barbara’s backyard cuisine idea was transformed into a first course of heirloom tomatoes, goat cheese and micro-greens with crisp pancetta and balsamic vinaigrette, followed by grilled veal chops with Fingerling potatoes and sautéed spinach. Chocolate ganache cake seems like a fitting ending for a warm but gala evening. Hold the mustard!

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New York designer Patricia Fisher also used natural greens as the centerpiece for her dining room table in the Audrey Hepburn room at  the Inspired Designs showhouse, which I toured recently. Ivy topiaries (I just love these!) flanked a low vase of white roses in the center of a table set with white china. Placemats seemed to be composed of flat, white skimming stones held together by mesh.

Simple red napkins were smartly arranged to show off their white stripe border design by pulling the folded tip partway through triple silver rings and then allowing the corners to ease into an emblem-like flare.