Both interior and garden design can be the ultimate expression of a person’s taste, personality and lifestyle, so it makes complete sense that each one informs the other. Traditionally, gardens were almost an afterthought in any property refurb, left till last when the budget had all but disappeared, but increasingly they are being integrated into the overall plan with garden designers working with architects and interior designers to ensure that the garden works seamlessly with the house. As garden designer Jinny Blom describes, the entire garden can spin off the interior or architecture of a client’s house.
‘Gardens are admired from all angles, therefore it’s essential to consider them holistically. I always take photos from inside the house. Working with architects, we collaborate in creating places literally from the ground up. We start by siting the building, then materials, colours and textures are considered together minutely. Equally I work closely with interior designers like Olivia Outred to blend inside and out. In one project we brought in the nature-inspired artist and muralist Flora Roberts to create a harmonic between our two worlds. For me, a well designed garden celebrates the whole; it cannot stand as a separate entity.’
As you might expect, well known interior or garden designers create these links effortlessly in their own homes, their creative eye bringing cohesion and beauty to both inside and outside. Veere Grenney’s home in Tangier is a wonderful example. Perched on the edge of a cliff with spectacular views over the Gibraltar Straits, the house has been completely remodelled to make the most of the views, with a long pillared loggia offering glimpses of the lush terraced garden before the big reveal. Terraces filled with palm trees, pomegranates, scented jasmine and plumbago tumble down the hillside, neatly contained within parterres of clipped evergreens. An internal courtyard, designed for the days when the wind is too strong for sitting outside, is like a microcosm of the wider garden with a central water fountain surrounded with clipped greenery and large pots filled with aromatic citrus trees.
Veere’s interior design is very much informed by nature and his Tangier house is full of exquisite floral detail, from the Colefax & Fowler rose chintz curtains in the treillage room to the plasterwork palm-tree pilasters in the dining room. Pots of pelargoniums and vases of flowers are displayed on tables throughout the year. ‘Nancy Lancaster always used to say that every good house needs to be supported by a great garden, and that is very much the idea here,’ says Veere. His exquisite taste and minute attention to detail is evident in every iota of space here, whether inside or outside. ‘My home here is, for me, the ultimate expression of beauty in the most wonderful location I could ever wish for,’ he writes in his book Seeking Beauty.
From the elegant clipped greenery and chintz of Grenney’s home to the glorious, colourful garden of Perch Hill in Sussex, home to gardener and author Sarah Raven. Sarah has created the garden here over 30 years and it has become part of her horticultural empire; a place to trial cutting flowers and vegetable varieties that she sells as part of her business. The gardens envelop the old farmhouse and its oast house, planted in a traditional style with an unpretentious mix of cottage garden flowers in the bright Venetian shades that Sarah loves.
The interior of the house is similarly relaxed in style. ‘Everything has a patina,’ says Sarah. ‘We’ve painted the walls in earthy, organic shades from Atelier Ellis’. In the entrance hallway, the walls are a deep rich green as if to link indoors and outdoors, with a series of botanical watercolours on the walls. And of course everywhere inside there are huge vases of seasonal flowers from the garden to bring the outdoors in.
Another creative whose life and home is defined by flowers is Cordelia de Castellane, who has an elegant country house in L’Oise, just north of Paris. As the creative director of Dior Maison she designs exquisite homeware often inspired by flowers, and by her muse Christian Dior. She designed the garden herself with the help of London based garden designer Milan Hajsinek, and made sure that its sightlines worked hand in hand with the house, creating perfect views framed by the windows. ‘I wanted to link the garden and the interior, they needed a common language,’ she says. The view from the main salon in the house now takes in a long double border, while from the kitchen you can glimpse a romantic turquoise-framed greenhouse and a quadrangle of beds overflowing with the flowers Cordelia loves, from roses and lavender to dahlias. Inside the house, floral wallpaper and botanical prints line the walls, and if Cordelia is entertaining, her Dior flower-themed tableware will be on display among her exquisite flower arrangements. The icing on the cake is the most perfect flower room, devoted entirely to arranging the flowers she brings in from the garden - providing the most tangible link from outdoors in.
