It’s lots of work to put a feast on at all, but it’s worth going a little extra to garnish your dishes.

When you plan the feast, you should be figuring out what you’ll cook the dishes and what you’ll serve them in. At the same time, work out how you’ll garnish them. It can make a great difference to the presentation.

My best practice is to have a dedicated garnish person. If you give them a sheet of stickers (better still, little flags) matched to heraldic motifs for particular tables, they can do that too and ensure that every dish goes to every table. They can add serving spoons too, another thing that too often gets missed out. Garnish helpers need an artistic eye, but no previous experience.

Here’s some suggestions for garnishes, which I’ll add to over time:

• edible flowers, eg violets, borage, chives, marigold, roses, nasturtium
• crystalised flowers (google for quick or fancy ways of doing these)
• sprigs of herbs: parsley, chives, golden marigold, fennel leaves, mint, whole nasturtium leaves, etc
• fried onions or raw sliced red onions
• fried almonds (whole blanched, or flaked)
• carrots, eg cut with a cinquefoil cutter, optionally candied
• candied strips of orange peel, or angelica, or lovage, etc
• pomegranate seeds
• pickles (green or pretty purple)
• croutons (or dumplings!)
• sprinkled nutmeg or cinnamon, maybe mixed with brown sugar in a shaker
• gingerbread stars etc
• chopped red cabbage

I walk around my garden and see what I can appropriate!

In recent years, I’ve moved to serving multiple dishes on a platter, in which case the dishes will garnish each other to some extent. Less dishes get lost if you use platters.