HOUSE TOUR | Garden Designer Butter Wakefield’s Victorian Home & Gorgeous Gardens in London

Garden Designer Butter Wakefield welcomes us into her marvelous Victorian home in West London. She gives us a tour of her garden before showing us how she sets the table for a luxurious lunch.

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over the last 30 years Garden designer butter Wakefield has transformed her West London home into a Floral Haven bringing a touch of the English Countryside to the city today on homeworthy she invites us inside her stunning Victorian Villa for a tour the Interiors feature vibrant splashes of color seamlessly reflecting the beauty of Butter’s Exquisite Garden after showing us her Blooms of the Season butter takes us back inside to set the table for Sumptuous lunch you’re watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story by clicking the join button below you not only support the production of these videos you also gain access to exclusive content just for members and today members will get an inside look into Butter’s fabulous Conservatory with Scenic views overlooking her gorgeous Gardens hi homeworthy I’m butter Wakefield welcome to my home in West London pleas please come [Music] [Applause] [Music] in hi um homeworthy my name is butter wak field and you’re in my home in London West London Shepherd’s Bush to be precise I’ve lived here for almost 32 years um I we bought the house when I was pregnant with our second son jack and um yeah so we I’ve lived here a long time I we bought it together um when I was married to my English husband he’s now um not my husband but I’m still here which is a blessing cuz I love it here and um all four children have been raised here and um it’s rather a special spot for me and the garden particularly so this is my front hall um it’s got this wonderful Co and Sun big leafy Palm uh wallpaper and below the doo rail it’s got this uh sage and onion little green paint which um I’m absolutely uh wetted to I think it’s really fun and then um this big black and white lenium floor and I think the floor is the thing that started first and has remained um we’ve had various changes throughout the house but the black and white has always been sort of the thread through the house and it’s kind of fun because it’s a big format and it’s easy to maintain and it’s it’s uh it’s it’s hardwearing and bomb proof basically and then up the stairs I sort of carried on this um when my husband moved out I sort of changed the St stair carpet and found this really fun black and white stripey stair runner and I painted um the handrail shiny black so you know I just kind of made it really as black and white as I could so this is kind of the hall and here um I’ve got some black and white floral floral Botanicals which um I Absolut absolutely love they’re all different they’re all they’re antique and I it’s really fun to view them as you go up and down the steps so um I rather love them in this little space right here as you come in the hall um what’s there are several clever things I think one the floor mat the Siz of floor mat is EXT extra oversized so you know lots and lots of filthy feet can fit onto here which is great and then a radiator cover I think is always so useful and I’ve got um antique bowls and to put my you know lots of stuff in tape measure always tape measure and then here I’ve got this lovely big antique mirror which kind of bounces the light around and a double set you know two hanging lanterns which I think is fun because typically you would have just had the one wouldn’t you but a friend of mine a designer friend of mine birdie forc said no no let’s have two here it’ll just Elevate everything I do notice there’s a missing light bulb which is really annoying and then um I found these incredible they’re wooden um deer heads and antlers I think the antlers are real but the deer heads are wooden I think they’re Austrian um really don’t know that probably 18th century maybe and then I got I’ve got these wonderful yellow gilded plates by an artist called Freya and um when I light the candle in the evening when I’ve got people for supper it does reflect the light so beautifully it’s really really fun and she’s so clever and they’re these are sort of running deers too so the sort of deer theme kind of uh you know continues and then across here on the other side of the wall which is nice you can see in the reflections um are some rather colorful Modern Art um and this one this big expansive yellow I I was very reluctant to to kind of get on board with the color yellow I really love this sort of bold dark sort of umber yellow with the S of flash of orange running through it and then that this is picked up by another artist called um Sharon and um they’re both alive and I love I love collecting artwork that um um from artists who are you know alive and well so this is fun so it kind of breaks up the green adds colors you come in and um yeah creates a sort of sense of fun which I think is rather important so that’s this is my sort of hway and upstairs and so from here we’ll go into the drawing room so um here we are in my drawing room which is um a lovely big gracious double dra drawing room the house um was built in the 1870s and um it’s sort of late Victorian early Edwardian and um what’s really nice about the house this house particularly is it has an East West aspect so my front garden at the front of the house is east facing and my rear Garden at the back of the house is west facing so Morning Light and evening light so I feel like I’m really blessed with um the best aspect particularly as um I’m a garden designer and aspect is really everything um when you’re you’re designing garden and it’s the first place you start so maybe um I should talk a little bit about myself um I’m an American and I’ve lived here for something like 37 years or something so most of my adult life I’ve lived in this country and not in America but I grew up in a very small farm in Maryland outside of Baltimore and it was very rural upbringing we did we played in the barn and in the streams and hardly ever saw you know I hardly ever saw my parents in the summertime it was Blissful bucolic joy and we had ponies and so we did sort of Pony camp and little bit of fox hunting and um so it was a it was a marvelous um upbringing and then from there I went to University and um ended up in New York where I worked at Christies and um when I was in New York uh working for Christies which I absolutely adored it kind of Saved Me Christies because it was you know as a sort of farm girl um it was so full of eccentric wonderful people and of course selling the most interesting the best of the best you know and it was not just pictures but it was paintings and silver and rugs and um jewels and Furniture so I got such an incredible exposure to very beautiful things um which has stayed with me forever ever since um and then in in when I was living in New York I met my English husband and that is um why I’m here still today so that’s a little bit of background um but it it’s been fun I when I arrived in this country I started working at kfax and fer which really it was a really lovely follow on from Christie’s actually um because that was sort of the the beautiful things and then um kofax of course is interior design so it helped me understand how to put a room together and how to choose colors that were complimentary and contrasting and taught me about scale and texture and color and form and composition which of course um has helped me hugely in my garden design business now but this more about the room itself um so the Black and White theme continues I’ve got um this is a a dyed cow rug it’s not a real zebra so but the black and white ticking is Ian manin and then the walls are a wonderful color it’s a Faron ball color called Lamp room gray which um kind of sets everything off so so beautifully and again of course more green and white this is b a fabric by Raul um for George Spencer which I really love cuz it’s so sort of bold and geometric and the blinds are nice I really love the sort of filtered lights and I like having them when it’s really sunny quite low and it makes it all nice and cool in here in the summertime so that’s good and then there’s a lot of color I love color um I’ve got these bold patterns here for instance and on the orange chair are all manual canavas and those two chairs there are manual canavas and um what I love best about this room is having all this kind of bold and bright colors I know it doesn’t suit everyone but for me it’s um I as I said earlier I really love color and um this Gallery wall is an example of you know how I just kind of all the colors I feel like are happy together and go um this is a very beautiful picture by a man called edley NOS who was sort of in the Bloomsbury set and um my ex-husband gave this to me when our first child Zoe was born so it’s a very special picture and then I’ve just kind of added to it over the years every time I kind of finish a big project and I feel it’s gone well instead of saving my money I might um spend it on a bit of art which um I feel is lovely because um it gives me pleasure every day and I can see it all the time and it it kind of reminds me that the hard work is worth you know it’s worth all the all the blood in the sweat sometimes the tears um so that this is the sort of first half of the drawing room um and it’s got a gas fire which is great so I sit here um in the mornings and do my tapestry I’ve got a really ugly light but it is really good and this is what I’m working on now which is a lovely arcul um pattern by K facet who’s who’s fantastic and these are both K facet vegetables a cabbage and a cauliflower and the thing about tapestry uh I I have um I feel as a business owner quite a busy stressful life and having a minute to do tapestry kind of on this on Saturday morning really helps kind of settle me and calm my nerves and reset for reset me for a happy kind of relaxed weekend and these two cushions here are also I did um these are both ke facet too he seems to I seem to understand his colors I do change some of them though I have to say I make them even brighter than he does so bit bit crazy wafer has just joined us in the drawing room and wafer kind of really does understand that he’s not really supposed to be up there don’t you but because it’s a film day maybe it’s okay he’s a Border Terrier he’s about 11 or 12 years old and it’s him and I we live together here so he is my bud and I’d be lost without him so me but really naughty he’s up there just saying um so flowers hugely important for me to be able to pick flowers I grow orange color tulips in the spring specifically to bring in here and cut and and um I love the color orange in case um it was that was unclear um and so orange and yellow and pink are three of my favorite flower combinations so I like to put tulips together in those sort of and those sort of rich rich tones um to bring inside but more about the room I mean this end of the room is kind of more slightly more summery and this end of the room is a little bit more wintry here’s a great picture um that a friend of mine Kirsty Withers painted which I absolutely love I mean it’s full of incredible purples and yellows and um she’s got wonderful use of a pallet knife and and her sense of creating a very beautiful landscape is seems to be um something that she does beautifully well so that’s one of hers and as is this one above the fireplace so this end of the drawing room is slightly more we sort of slightly it’s more wintry somehow we feel um it’s got a real fireplace which is lovely and um something that I love about this room are the shelves I love shelves I think shelves are a wonderful opportunity to put stuff on I love collecting bits of China as you can see this is a rather comprehensive collection of pink luster and I love a saffer dog so I’ve got lots of um saffer spaniels about the place there’s another one hiding behind um the orange lampshade and my choice of color and my love of color has slowly developed over the years and my love particularly for Orange has is probably a recent um phenomenon probably in the Last 5 Years so I started um my foray into um my fascination with orange by painting the inside of the bookshelves orange first and then slowly I’ve just added more orange as my sort of confidence and and love for it has grown so this is a very sweet slipper chair that I got from my friend Joanna plant and I covered this in this wonderful orange M hair it’s kind of a burnt orangey color and um and then I put a rather lovely contrast um fan Edge on it in a sort of red color which I think is really fun and it’s just a great little chair that you can pull up I can pull it up over there if we need extra seating or here and then I’ve got these two Puffs one here and one there and they are great for additional seating you know really lovely to sit by the fire and I love them they’re terrific bits of extra furniture lots of the chairs in this room are old that it’s an that’s an old chair and this is an old chair and the two in the other side of the drawing room are old and I love mixing um old and new I think it makes a much more pleasing and interesting U composition Furniture wise and you want to set out um you know your seating areas so two people can sit comfortably and have a conversation but so can six and then eight if if you need to and I think it’s really nice to have tables nearby and um I love an ottoman and it’s again another surface to put things on so this has got a lovely old antique um tray which is an iron wood tray I think it’s called iron I think it’s called Ironwood and a Wedgewood Wedgewood plates and I love having stacks of books and candles and you know I just like composing tabletop um you know Ottomans for instance and then just flower more flowers everywhere so um you can’t really have too many again I love to collect things this is um SE glass that I’ve collected over the years I’ve got two big pots of them we spend our summers um on Cape Cod and um you know I just love to you know comb the beaches and find seag glass and there’s another glass of it there and it’s always a good um walk on the beach when I you know come home with a little handful of SE glass um the other thing that I want to talk about quickly before we leave the drawing room is the two lamps in the window they’re rather special um I found them in an antique shop in on um great Island on cape card and um they they were there for a couple of years and I thought if they’re there if I go back and they’re there I still then I’m going to have to bring them home so I I I I packaged them up and um ship them home honestly it costs more to ship them home than the lamps themselves but I think this sort of a this sort of mie orange glass is so particularly beautiful and in the morning when the sun kind of shines through it it casts this amazing sort of movy orange glow across um the drawing room which is rather special and then my friend Rossy daro um made these lampshades to go with so yeah one little added extra which I think um has made sort of makes this sort of table kind of come to life if I have to describe my style my sense of style I guess it’s pretty clear that I’m I would call myself a maximalist I’m also um particularly a color I think I’m quite traditional though too I know that there are a lot of colors in here but the the it’s quite a traditional setup here you know the it’s there’s not a modern element to be found so I’d say quite um tra and um full of color and and I love to layer things I think um that’s what makes a room really interesting and collecting things for on your travels for your home I think is one of the nicest things you can do um to bring the H the the home to life and I think it’s the found things that you um stumble upon in antique shops on your travels are the things that really are the most special and um so I do try to um keep a b ey out for all sorts of fun things like I have this little collection of sacker cows cow creamers which I’m absolutely mad about and I’ve got you know a little herd of them and I just think they’re so sweet and charming and it helps that they’re also orange and cream so um they kind of U amuse me and then I I love to put flowers in old jugs and pictures and containers cuz I think the the container is as important as the flower arrangement so this is a lovely old chint wear jug and this is a really pretty old um luster pink luster jug which is very unusual this size and this pattern is so unusual so I I was delighted when I stumbled upon that so um it just makes it I think it makes the home interesting and um then this is he this this container here is a new Potter um who I discovered when I stayed a lovely um um PR Moment In Time England which is in the countryside in um oxer and he had he has he has incredible um color I think he uses color so beautifully so there are three there on that table there’s one here full of these flowers and then um there’s a little collection of them on my ottoman in here and I think it’s really nice to combine old and new and um I think I don’t ever have any problems doing that I think some people are like oh gosh you know it’s a bit of a and I just mix it all up I think it’s really fun and it makes for a really interesting home so I love that so on we go to the kitchen so on um my way to the kitchen um there is a little um downstairs L which I think might be um something to take a little look at so again it’s um it’s a tiny tiny room and I put um a nice kind of TW um Style wallpaper in there and then I just covered the walls as much as I could with pictures so when you’re in here you’ve got something nice to look at and um again um opportunity um to have some shelves we kind of and a cupboard which sort of hides the L cleaner and um theing paper and then shelves above which I I enjoy kind of fiddling about with again more dogs you can see my little collection here and birds I’m also really keen on birds I do love birds I love garden Birds I like feeding the birds and um my PA love to feed the birds and so um I’m very keen and and then I have a little collection of nests that um I found in my travels um that have fall on the ground always I would never pluck one out of a tree but um I have some lovely old bird’s nests up there too so um again it’s a real mixture of of style and and color and pattern and form and I’ve got some birds here but then I’ve got some sort of fern ferns and a giraffe and then a lovely sweet little collection of dogs here and some you know so I think you know whatever you want to put up put up so it’s kind of fun here I am in the kitchen and please excuse the ugly dog crate and the pile of hideous things on top but this is a home and it’s part of it and I thought I could move that but I’m not going to cuz I can’t be bothered I don’t have enough time I was much more focused on the flowers for the table and the table itself so this is kind of the beading heart of the home it’s probably the beaing heart of every home I imagine but um this one particularly the black and white uh floor runs through from here and into the conservatory which is over here but um the kitchen’s always been such a happy place for us as a family the four children um the black countertop also sort of mimics the the black everywhere else and when we were when we bought the house we had we didn’t have enough money to put hanging sh you know hanging cupboards above the uh countertop so I just had the idea that I would just set to and cover the walls with black frame print so the black has been a theme that’s kind of runs throughout and I think I’m so pleased that it worked out that way because I think it’s so much nicer not to have the walls kind of overwhelmed with hanging cupboards and it was very much of the fashion then now it’s all sort of all open shelves isn’t it but it was very much the fashion to have big clumpy heavy cupboards above but we couldn’t afford them I’m so happy result so um lots of Botanical prints on the walls in black black frames some of them are literally just postcards I think this one’s a postcard so anything that I could find that was um Floral in the early days I would slap a black frame on and hang and there’s some butterflies and other bits and pieces this is a particularly special bit of um artwork by a friend of mine called Sarah Bowen and um it was a commission that I I um asked her to do for me I said I wanted a bu colic scene of the countryside um with some cows out to remind me of home and um there it is she’s done it beautifully so um I get great joy from looking at that every day and she’s you know she chose the um the color of the flowers for me and put the figs in all the sort of movie purples that I love and then another shelf more shelves um I’ve got here’s my collection of staffer dogs which I am very partial um to they I think they just look so sweet and cheery and um they just amuse me and kind of keep me company if that possible so here we are and and people always say oh my God how do you clean all this with the grease and you know you just take it all down and soap it down and put it back up again so it’s never bothered me any of that you know you just give it a clean and I’m not fastidious about it all being immaculately clean and anyway I think again like the crate it’s all about living in a home and having it work for for you as the home owner and this works for me so I I I you know every now and then I think oh must it’s time to clean so um this is a cooker and and then of course my kitchen sink which is a lovely big kitchen sink looks onto the garden which is a very happy place to spend time as you know as um you know the mother of before there’s been a lot of time spent at the kitchen sink so it’s not it’s nice to have a really beautiful view and and as a garden designer I often think of about the views looking from the inside out into the garden and how important it is to create interesting viewports and sight lines and focus um and and focal points so at the end of at the end of this run on down my kitchen my out my kitchen door which this is kind of a fun door too just um by the way it’s a sort of barn door which is really helpful when you have a dog so it can be open but he can you know he he’s he stays in but um this is a very this is kind of the longest axis um and if you’re standing at the front door you can see all the way through and down the hall across the garden and to the back of um the Wallflower Meadow so that’s rather magical I think that’s something that I uh care a lot about is the view from the the inside out and try hard um to create those magical moments for my clients as well kitchen table just um quite average I’d say but um rather nice it looks good laid and unlaid and I’ve got this wonderful Penny Morrison stripe um fabric on on the benches I I had chairs here originally but I found the backs of them got in the way and kind of created too much confusion on the sort of cleaner line so this is this is better for me I think um some people don’t like sitting on benches but I don’t mind um I’d much prefer to sit on a bench and not have a great big chair back in the way so um yeah this is kind of where a lot of happy memories have been made which is great and then in at the end sort of asymmetrically we’ve got these two rather um dark painted units um the tall units in the kitchen are the this sort of lovely red kind of M mahogany red color this is a color called Aris by little green um company and then I wanted to kind of create some amusement by putting pink with it red and pink I think it’s kind of a fun combination and weirdly this plant is the same so he can um she she’s welcome to the party and then um below um the black countertop here the inside of the wine rack is Pink as well well again just to kind of create a little lightness and amusement and a combination a little sweet little picture up there which I absolutely adore um uh it’s it’s just that red and pink again combination which I think is is so pretty with a bit of green my favorite thing in the whole world so um this is the kitchen uh and it’s been this way for a very long time so this is the these are the new additions but it’s been white and green and black for a long time so bravely I just I just quite recently painted these two things so I’m very pleased I think it adds a sort of richness to otherwise rather more sort of clean look the children were not at all con convinced they’re like mommy don’t do that I’m like no I got to change things sometimes so I uh imagine you might wonder um how on Earth I got the name butter um and it’s um was given to me a long time ago um by my father when I was a baby um I was round like a butter ball fortunately the ball bit dropped but um I’ve been butter ever since and I um it’s kind of a funny one when I there was an awkward age when I was about 12 and I was like please no one call me butter anymore and um you know when you’re so self-conscious when you’re sort of just sort of entering your teens and I um was riding with A really lovely magical trainer and he said to me when I said would you mind calling me Al Lisa and he was kind of the love of my life I had the biggest crush on him and he said I’m not going to ever call you Alisa I will only ever call you butter so you’re just going to have to get used to that so I just thought well okay if it’s good enough for him then I will hang I’ll hang on to it and it’s just followed me I there there were moments when I got to Christy’s in New York I thought maybe now maybe now I should be a Lisa um but all it took was someone to call me butter and they’re like wait is what that’s your name we want to call you butter so I uh have never really been able to shed it but in many ways there are not many of me so um I feel like it’s kind of serve me well in a way I I never have to say my surname which is Wakefield so um I only ever have to say butter and butter is actually even my business you know butter Wakefield Garden sign is my business name too so that’s how I got that name as you can see um there’s more of this lovely Pottery uh by um a man whose name I can’t remember but I will remember eventually um and um lovely flowers the table’s not laid yet but I think that might be something that we can do together once we’ve been in the garden so we’ll do that um after that so from the kitchen into the garden um yeah what two steps down which is um lovely not too much again um my door which I’m going to talk to you briefly about cuz I think it’s rather special um it’s a St table door which I spoke about earlier but what we did which makes it rather lovely is we put it was a bit of a small opening you can see the the the door itself is quite small and it felt a bit diminutive so we put a lovely big surround around it a Timber surround with lovely big generous moldings and sort of fluting and then we put a bit of a lead flashing on the cap and painted it this lovely color this is um far and ball down pipe so the whole exterior uh the woodwork on the windows and doors and Conservatory are all painted dark which I really love I don’t really like white windows I don’t know why but um I prefer them dark and and I think this is a really nice color so um yeah I have a small circular table here which um seats six comfortably um they set for four right now and um here are some of my pelagonians which I’ve grown from cuings they love it outside so as soon as it warms up and the uh fear of frost is over they come outside and um and then this is just an old n of succulents which um I find quite amusing because they have these fabulous flowers which I think are kind of crazy and terracotta pots the whole way around on the Terrace I I find um that if you choose one or two different materials uh both inside and out but mostly outside I think you have to be a little bit more controlled actually so I’ve got terracotta metal um this is old reclaimed York Stone on the ground which I think is very beautiful and pleasing and kind of Timeless and then the only um kind of crazy colored thing are these wonderful old antique buckets which I found and um they had all my tulips in them in the spring and I’ve just uh sewn in situ some zenas here so they’re under well underway I did that um last week maybe in between crazy moments I had I just thought I’ve just got so much inas so here here they are I hope they do well and then um I’ve just got these this rather um comfortable sort of over stuffed it’s lovely here um two benches two three seater benches and a coffee table and tables again this this is this my love for a surface um I love to have full of pots because um I think when you look out from the inside and you you see a table full of interesting pots that change seasonally you know you really create um something special to view and when it’s raining and and filthy which it is often in this country um a table full of pretty Parts is is something quite special and then the upholstery again I love mixing different this is lovely Rapture and R which I I had a little bit left over of and then this is just a very pretty um cotton and a ticking so and then I combine everything together to kind of create you know that’s a different Stripe from that stripe and then this is this sort of ties the two together and then and then the big cushions in this rather pretty um floral green and white floral so um more green more green so off we go into the garden I’ll just talk you through how how it’s laid out first and then we can go have a little peek around so I’ve got two big borders quite traditional um mix borders we call them in this country either side um they’re about 1.6 M wide which is about 5 foot I think something about like something like that and um they’re punctuated and rather formal quite English punctuated by these U pyramids I’ve got um four running down this side and three running down this side I lost one at the end but um i’ I’ve kind of thought it’s fine without it and then I I inherited this beautiful old apple tree and this incredible big Magnolia Granda Flora above us which I have a LoveHate relationship with I love it in the wintertime because it’s Evergreen and it really creates a magical kind of canopy and in the summertime I kind of hate it because it sheds its leaves all summer literally From This Moment onwards for about three good months I come out here and it’s littered with leaves so that kind of drives me crazy but the good thing about it is um it keeps the conservatory really cool and it has wonderful flowers for the night flying malls so it’s great the flowers are great to the pollinators which is very important so the borders um down each side of the garden are um um mixed with deciduous shrub so I’ve got lots of hydrangea Annabelle and hydrangea panicular Limelight and at the back and then running down the front of the Border I’ve got a combination of geraniums and GM turttly tangerine and euphorbia and a and a variety of other um sun-loving perennials this is the southf facing border so this is the sunny border so this will um I can have all the sort of things that like cat mint and a pizza that really love the sunshine and this is the north facing border so you’ll see that it’s got much more sort of foliage Fox gloves and ferns the things that really appreciate a shadier a shadier aspect so and then again a big um hydrange of Limelight and some roses that kind of the sun’s sort of in the summertime sets in that corner so the the Roses on this very far Corner closest to the house get enough sun to perform beautifully and then down the middle of the garden um I’ve got my w our meow which I am absolutely devoted to because it’s so rich with nectar for the pollinators and it’s I know I’m I know I’m doing my very best for them by having this and and having long grass where they the insects can um grow and hibernate and over winter and get get what they need in the springtime um really makes me feel feel great so and it it changes every year so here we’ve got the Red Campion and I threaded also through some alium along here which is this sort of purpley onion sort of round shaped bulb so they the bees and the pollinators this so this is sorl and we’ve got um the white daisy which I can’t remember its name right now which is very odd cuz I know it so well and fennel and um gr lots of grasses and buttercups this is our native butter cup which is something that I really hope will I really am trying to cultivate the yellow flower that um to run the whole way through cuz I think it’s so pretty and might be a weed for some but for others it’s um it’s it’s just um I don’t know it just it’s so countryfied for me the Buttercup and then um I also in here I’ve got verbina bonariensis I’ve got that threaded through the whole of the meadow and this will sort of dance it will sort of grow to this height and it’ll sort of dance above and the bees and the butterflies love it so it’s all about creating you know pit stops and feeding stations for Lots of the bees and you’ll see here there’s a great big fat bumblebee you know right on the Red Campion here can you see that so I I I I just think it’s magical I find it I there’re bees and butterflies everywhere but I find this the most captivating I I I it really it kind of so soothes my soul as it were so this is the meadow and it’s easy I just um I was lucky enough to get um it Turf you can buy Wild Flower meta Turf and just roll it out what it really wants is um very thin pore soil so you don’t have to enrich it or prepare it at all so it’s really easy to establish and create something rather special so I try to include a lot of this in my clients’s um Gardens too I you know I’m always suggesting and then um down this side they’re just kind of going over but over beh in front of me on my back boundary are some climbing roses which I am particularly wedded to um got a series of I think there’s the pink one at this end is the generous Gardener and then there’s Madam Alfred carrier to start with and then this is Blair number two sadly they are just going over but um there’s they they really do add they kind of create this sort of lovely sense of of English English Countryside which I think is so important and and then here we are so we have some Fox gloves too again these you’ll often see the bees going right up inside the fox gloves oh there’s one that’s just come out so Fox gloves are great for the pollinator so is this little geranium fa this is a really early flowering perennial um which loves the shade it’s kind of peppered through the Wildflower metat and I just leave it because it’s so early to flower and when the pollinators first come out of hibernation they’re desperate hungry so early flowering um plants are really good to include in the garden and then oh yeah I’ve got some Bramble here too weed but um we we we put up with all things all all comers are welcome so in the winter time I really try not to tidy the garden too much I leave the leaves you know there’s this whole new movement about allowing the you know wildlife habitat to remain so I will cut the meadow um Midsummer probably early July um down to the ground and leave it so that um for a day or two to allow the seed to drop and then I’ll clear all the debris away because if you leave the debris um it’s nitrogen Rich which the wild flowers won’t like cuz they want a thin poor diet so I I will um cart that all up and bag that and and put it in my compost and also get get it collected by the green waist man um and then I leave it for then it will grow back it’ll probably get to about this High um in in the summer time by the end of the summer and then I just leave it over winter so it remains kind of tall and grassy and and lovely over the winter and and I and I pretty much do the same to the borders so if you come with me back behind these two screens um I’ve got my sort of secret hiding place back here which is where I like to spend my time hiding from everyone else here I am at the back very very back of the garden behind a sort of set of three trellis screens covered in this gorgeous Evergreen climber called trao spum jasminoides and um it’s highly scented and great for the pollinators I also have it climbing up the back of my house and what I’ve learned over the years is that my bedroom which is above the kitchen is um open you is exposed on three walls so it’s quite cold and um the track at the back of the house has created this real um in the summertime it’s much cooler and in the winter time it’s much warmer so it’s re it really is extraordinary how plants can actually help it’s not extraordinary at all it’s a well-known fact but plants really can help insulate buildings and you know keep things cool in the summer and warm in the winter time so that’s a good reason for clothing your house in lovely climbers and this is kind of my sort of little workstation back here I’ve got um lovely old metal buckets which I’m very keen on and um these are all my bulbs from the um the spring that are now going over and dying back so it looks terrible back here at the moment but um that is kind of part of the life cycle of the growing world and um in here I’ve got lovely herbaceous perennials and fox gloves this is a little one of my favorite perennials called NAIA macedonica and it’s a little it’s a scab scab scabas scabiosa in the scabiosa family and the bees and butterflies love it so as they they do the fox gloves and here’s you know more terracotta so I’ve got a sort of series of terracotta pots here some with summer summer flowers some with bulbs and then this is a summer you know summer flowering um planting combination here with Peta scabiosa and then Aima mollus and a little GM and my compost bin is very good and just a little table and my shed of course not very beautiful but um you know you have to have a place where the ugliness can be really so if you come with me we’ll go back down this side of the garden The Sunny Side and um we can look at things um from this View and this angle so um this is my focal point which is my my lovely basket and um it’s a wicker basket it it’s it’s vintage and um a lovely antique dealer who I get lots of my uh client furniture from thought that I should have it as a reward for being such a good Patron and it’s a great harvesting basket and um in the spring it was full of tulips and now I’ve um self sewn or sewn in situation some uh little seed of Nigella which is love and a miss which is a sweet little um summer flowering annual which so I’m hopeful that that’s going to kind of explode in this frothy sea of sort of blue haze in a little a little moment’s time and then this border again it’s got some lovely roses in here so this is Basco Bell which is so pretty and then this little one here is a I think it’s I think this is I don’t know what that is actually I couldn’t tell you but that’s Basco Bell and this look at this this is so pretty look at the color of this I think this one is Charles de Mill just going over so beautiful but I might be wrong I I I can’t really I’m not very good on my roses I mean I am but I’m not um and then again climbing roses along the boundary this is a lovely big um another um member of the scabas family scaba this is sephilia gigantia and this gets lovely and tall and has creamy colored pin cushion flowers like the NAIA um behind the screens and the bees Love It Again full of look at this little moth on here you’ve got to come and zooming on this I mean that is so exciting to me so we’re providing nectar for that little friend and again um my U pyramids I um there was box in the garden um box Bush box wood but it had the blight and the caterpillar and so I bit the bullet and took it all out and put the U in and I have never regretted that decision because it’s absolutely maintenance-free you have to clip it of course but there’s no spraying there’s nothing to do except for enjoy it and in the winter time when all this will have died back the U the U pyramids are the thing that kind of hold the whole garden together so it’s the form in and amongst the chaos and they kind of disappear in the summertime a bit but in the winter time they really come come to their own and I love a clip shape in a garden I think if it’s all frothy and and pretty it’s it it lacks a certain amount of you know style and form and these provide that so they’re really uh I wouldn’t be without them so I might pick a flower or two and take you inside and May maybe I’ll show you how to condition um cut flowers from the garden particularly wild flowers because um if you don’t condition them they go over really quickly they just W oh look here’s a lovely big fat Bumblebee the most interesting thing about the meadow is this is red clover do you see that there are so many different varieties of bumblebees which I’m only learning about now that one is very yellow and not black you know sometimes you see them and they’re very black and white but that one is just kind of yellowy one when I pick the wild flowers which I tend to do um I’ll pick to a to a set of uh leaves so this is again the Red Campion which has gone over but I quite like this I think it’s the seed head is just as pretty as the flower so I’ll picked to a pair of buds here and then for some reason I always turn it upside down I don’t know why um no Gathering no lovely beautiful basket sadly but so and then I’ll just again I’ll pick um at a set of B a set of uh leaves and turn it upside down I feel like it kind of prevents any of the goodness from washing down the stem um and then here’s some GM this is totally Tangerine which you saw inside I’ve got a lot of it inside and I grow this because I love orange so much you can see it’s kind of slightly running down the Border it’s just going over but um I plant things in my garden that um complement the colors in my house so so the orange of the GM really works well in my drawing room and in my kitchen and I think that’s it it makes sense to me to have and and I do ask my clients when I’m you know when we’re discussing color and color combinations what you know what the rooms are going to be decorated in that look onto the garden and um It’s A really lovely way to have that sort of link between the outside and the in just having one or two colors that complement each other both inside and out so I always ask that question see here’s another here’s a very different bumblebee here that one’s much more yellow I mean look at them woo okay so I’m going to pick a GM as well and again I go right down to um to a pair of leaves I love the fennel too don’t you love the fennel so I’ve got a bit of fennel running down the the Border too which I think is so frothy and pretty and um the the flowers of the fennel are great for the pollinator so yeah yeah and I love how it kind of es and flows and kind of undulates the whole way down I think it’s it creates a really kind of there’s a lot of movement and when it’s when there’s a little gentle breeze it kind of you know it’s it’s very captivating [Music] so maybe we’ll go inside and um do some a little bit of flower arranging and tablescaping that sounds like a good idea so I’m coming back inside um and I’d love to step by step talk you through how I lay a table because I think it’s um it’s something that I really enjoy doing and um um but before we get uh embroiled in that I’m just going to boil the kettle cuz I want to teach you how to condition the flour so I’ll boil the kettle and then we’ll come on to conditioning and we’ll lay the table together so I always start with um an underlay cuz I think um a cloth on on top of a hard table isn’t particularly luxurious feeling so I have this very patchy old underlay I and I think you can get them exactly to to the same dimension of your table so um yeah this goes down first I love to add lots and lots of layers and texture and fabric to the table and um I think it looks really lovely when it’s layered up and then I’ve got this love the old bit of um Indian fabric that I’ve had forever which I love to kind of put on top as well so again creating just extra layers and it’s kind of reversible so sometimes I use this side and I might use this side today cuz it’s so bright and sheery and my tablecloth you can see it doesn’t quite fit the length of the table but I really don’t think that matters um I feel like it’s all about um you know not making it too perfect I don’t know I I I I feel like our lives are so concerned about being perfect that when it’s not I don’t think it matters that’s my that’s my philosophy anyway so that’s the sort of layer the first two three layers and then I think it’s fun to add a mat as well why not so laying the table for six and again um color-wise I think yellow and green is so spring– likee and pretty we’re in May and I think um yellow and green just feel kind of right so they go on I love to entertain and but I do it in a very relaxed way um there’ll be food on the counter which I will um have I do like to cook so um it’s very rare that I um buy food for a dinner party um but it does take time and um when you’re sort of busy gardening it’s I find I find it’s hard to come up with the right amount of time to do all these things so um I I spread them out but I do nonetheless and I think a lunch party is often one of the nicest ways and so spoiling there there it just feels rather a little bit naughty and a little bit decorate having lunch with friends but anyway so I’ve got my tablecloth and now my sort of Indian Patchwork cloth on top and then um the next thing are are these lovely um white ceramic plates which I think are really lovely and fun quite um chunky but great and what I really like to do is layer layer layer layer so I also have these lovely antique plates so I’ll put a stack of them on the table even if we don’t use them I’ll always put a stack on the table cuz I just think stack of lovely old plates look so pretty and I’ve got some pretty green ones as well so they’ll go on top each one is different which I find so kind of beguiling I just find um them so pretty and color F and delicate and I think again having some old things makes it um table look a bit more special and then I have these lovely stripy napkins which I think are so spring-like and um again they don’t you know there there’s a bit of yellow and green in them but I I just think they’re so sweet they’ve got sort of daffodils and and again they don’t really match but I think they all kind of go so I I I quite like a very eclectic table that is colorful and bright and yeah so they’re here and the the strip the stripes are all go going in different directions too which is rather amusing clearly laundry I don’t know who’s in charge so that’s that and then um I might do the flowers next so I um arranged these this morning condition them and um I I think when people arrive I think it’s really nice to have it you know rather full and um busy and then if it’s too much and you can’t really see one another what I might do is I might just sort of move them to the side but I think when when people arrive it’s really nice to sort of have the the vision that you want of the table so I got the I have these crazy stripey cups which um again I think are just so fun and add another level of kind of pattern I love the stripes so there are so many different patterns here there’re stripes and Stripes the floral more stripes some daisies and um to me it’s beginning to really feel interesting and um you know uh you know there’s a lot of detail which I think makes it um a nice you know really outstanding place to be and then I’ve got more color more color I’ve got these L rather gorgeous pink and orange morani glasses and um I think they add again just more more pattern and more color um to the table so I would probably serve um wine in those and water in these and then um Cutlery and I have um some rather fun um bamboo handled Cutlery which I think is again a lovely contrast you know to have a bit of woo a bit of weightiness to the table you know not all light and pretty and um but the brown I I think is very pleasing to the overall um design of the table and tablescaping really is a thing isn’t it I I think it’s almost as fun as um coming up with the guest list and cooking for your friends I think laying a table or setting a table as you say in the states um is a really lovely thing to do I I get a lot of satisfaction and Joy from um you know sitting at a at a beautifully laid table but also um doing it myself so um I think it’s a very nice thing to to to do and don’t you think the brown goes so well I think the brown really sort of makes it feel less kind of girly as it were then I’ve got these crazy gug jugs up here which I have to carefully extract from this ridiculous setup I have but they are my water jugs so I’ll fill these up and I love to put um lemon and fresh mint in the water I think that’s just a very simple nice way of making the water SL or or even fresh cucumber I think fresh cucumber in water is um a really nice tiny um extra treat which I think is well worth doing [Music] so they will that will go there so yeah I think that’s pretty much um how I would do it um I would have serving dishes down here at each end and I think it’s really nice to have everything on platters that you can pass to one another as around the table I think it creates conversation and um camaraderie and um it’s a nice way and then you can take what you want and the amount you want and you know there’s sort of no pressure as it were to if you’re presented with a plated up um plate of food it’s often difficult to sort of get exactly what you want to eat so um yeah so I think that’s kind of a joyful way to to lay the table so um now that the table’s pretty much ready to go I think it’ be really nice nice um to just briefly walk you through conditioning flowers and why it’s important to do so and how you do it and it’s very simple but basically I’ve boiled the kettle and I will now pour that into just a very bog standard Pyrex jug um just a couple of inches deep and then I’ll have something to put the the conditioned flowers in it’s important that they transition from the boiled water into their final resting home so this is just um a little green bottle which I collect um I’ve got lots of lovely old bottles here which I think are really fun and um I like adding those into the table as well as the sort of bigger Arrangements I think it’s fun to kind of have bearing height of um flowers on the table and then I also think it’s nice to add some candles which I’ll do at the end so here we are we’ve got our boiling water and we’ve got our freshly picked uh little blooms and it doesn’t take long for them to start going over so you have to I do it quite quickly and I often do it while I’m in the garden I’ll set this all up and with my cup of coffee in the morning on Saturday and I’ll condition them right away so um it’s it’s really important so this is you can see it’s already looking a bit tired uh is to take any of the green leaves off the stem and then you put you plunge the stem into the boiled water into the boiling water cut below the water level count for a few seconds 1 2 3 four five six 7 and then and it goes into its jug again remove this the green and and it’s a good idea um I learned recently not to pull the stem the green leaves off the stem it’s far better to break the green leaf off because by stripping the green leaf down or pulling it down it often weakens the Integrity of the stem so it’s better just to Twist the the leaves off the stem and not pull them down and then that goes in there and then here’s a very beautiful bit of grass that I picked from the Met which I absolutely adore so again just cut cut the foliage off the leaves rather below if it’s slightly wooder I would count for instead of 5 to 7 seconds I might count to 10 10 to 12 seconds and this is slightly slightly just ever so slightly woodier so um but see that to me is um very pleasing very very simple there are three different things in there and then I’ve got the seed heads from the Red Campion which again I really like the look of it’s different from the flower itself but I think it’s equally pleasing and then I kind of approximate the height of it I think I need it a bit shorter than that so I’ll cut it a bit shorter out of the water and then I’ll cut it it uh to I hope it’s final height in the water and there the air bubbles are rising so I know that this is working and it’s good to count to cut flowers on the angle the stems on the angle because then they have more surface area to draw up the water to keep them happy for longer I have a lot of good gardening gear because I’m you know at it all the time and um Milwaukee which is a Japanese brand make these flower scissors and they’re wonderful they hold their sharpness for a long time they’re very very pleasing on the hand and to handle and um yeah they’re ergonomically good and yeah I I I like the brand a lot I’ve got you can see I’ve got a pile of them here the Milwaukee with the yellow handles and um they’re really really and they keep their they keep their Edge really well so they’re good they’re good to um they stay sharp basically so I’m a great fan and I also have their gloves too the Milwaukee gloves they’re really good too so there we go so that’s just the little and I might add a few of those to the table as well threaded down the middle and then I think no table is complete even if it’s lunch um in the daytime without a candle and a Candlestick so these are lovely aier candlesticks French and um great big yellow and again like flowers I think candles should be at varying Heights I think you want some tall and some short to create sort of gentle sense of movement and I don’t think they have to be set out equally I don’t think they have to um match I don’t think they have to be you know um in any way shape or form perfect I just think um choose and I I I would never in a million in years ever have or use or choose a white candle when you can have have a yellow candle or a pink candle or an orange candle so um I I think color again I mean I have banged on about it a lot but I think you know that is pure joy to me and with um the green of the glug jug and the plates I just feel like it’s just an extra layer of prettiness so there we go the cable homeworthy thank you thank you very much for coming I think you’ve taken up quite enough of my time I need to get back to work and back to my garden the sun is shining thank you for coming bye thanks for watching be sure to go to homeworthy doccom for exclusive content shopping guides and so much more