HOW GREEN BECAME THE NEW BLACK
After one of the bleakest years in living memory, the fashion world turned to nature for motivation. Here, style insiders share the private gardens that kept them inspired through 2O2O and beyond
When our lives turned upside down, the fashion set found solace in an unlikely place… their gardens. Here, four insiders share the spaces that inspire them most
THE BEAUTY OF A GARDEN IN BLOOM has long inspired the fashion world. Christian Dior created dresses in the shape of flowers and stitched lily of the valley into the hems of his couture. Maria Grazia Chiuri continues that enthusiasm: for SS20, 100 trees were donated to the Tuileries Garden, and her Catherine Tote, inspired by Christian Dior’s sister’s passion, has pockets for a trowel, secateurs and gloves.
The trend for designer gardening garb is blossoming – from wellies at Bottega Veneta, Brunello Cucinelli and Celine, to Prada’s raffia bucket hat and Fendi’s watering can. Fashion has long been an urban affair, with its network of cities. But this is changing. Over the past year, nature became our haven (collectively we bought 322 million more plants in 2020 than in 2019), and that included the fashion industry. Alessandro Michele is just one designer who found solace in gardening. He posted images of himself watering plants before sending a box of organic vegetables in lieu of an AW20 show invite. Meanwhile Jonathan Anderson created home fragrances inspired by the plants in his Norfolk garden. What was once a whimsical indulgence is now an emotional lifeline – as working patterns change, rooting ourselves in nature is increasingly possible. We talk to some of gardening’s fashionably early adopters…
CAROLE BAMFORD Founder of luxury clothing brand Bamford
‘I love all the seasons in England but – more than anything else – I adore the hedgerows when you are driving along and you see a tapestry hedge full of blossom.’ Carole Bamford is waxing lyrical about that heady moment in late spring when everything seems to magically burst into life. ‘I love all the scents – white wisteria, lilacs, daphnes, philadelphus – I even love the smell when it’s wet, of bark, trees and soil.’
It’s a fitting declaration from the organic trailblazer, who founded the Daylesford empire that includes shops, cafes, The Wild Rabbit pub, the Bamford clothing and organic skincare line and a farm shop based on the thriving 1,500-acre Gloucestershire estate. This year Carole is adding a collection of garden tools, furniture, planters and soil, as well as heritage seeds and seasonal bulbs to her retail offering. She was an early and vocal adopter of organic principles ‘when it was still considered to be a bit bonkers’.
Her odyssey began when her daughter Alice was six weeks old. ‘I was planting roses and they were spraying chemicals on the farm, which was affecting the flowers. I thought, My daughter is also inhaling these chemicals. It was a lightbulb moment.’ She learnt about organic principles at the Royal Agricultural Show shortly after and her conversion was complete. And she’s still learning. Her most recent interest? Healing plants, inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden’s collection of medicinal herbs, which Daylesford now grows to add to supplements and teas.
Carole began with a small greenhouse and started growing tomatoes. ‘There is nothing like a tomato picked off the vine on a sunny day. That’s when gardening grabbed me. It became a passion. It’s so good for your mental health: you are outside, you are seeing results. You can lose yourself in a garden.’ Her favourites all have a touch of wildness about them, like the overflowing borders designed by Vita Sackville-west at Sissinghurst Castle or William Kent’s
“Plant a seed and it will give feedback – our design process is very SIMILAR”
Rousham in Oxfordshire. ‘It’s like nature has had a hand in it. It’s not neat and trimmed to an inch of its life,’ she says. ‘A garden always teaches you. When you do a room inside a house, you know what it will look like next year. With a garden, you have to learn from nature; some things work and some don’t. But it teaches you to adapt.’
CAROLE’S GARDENING WISDOM
Keep a notebook or diary of what you’ve planted, what worked and what you want to plant next year.
Plant naturalising bulbs under trees. Ten years ago I planted 100 cyclamen bulbs under trees – now I have 10,000.
Grow roses, trees or hedges from bareroot plants in winter – they’re cheaper and will do better than those in containers.
IMOGEN WRIGHT AND VINCENT LE CHAPELAIN Founders of Wright Le Chapelain
On their very first date in 2012, Vincent Le Chapelain wooed Imogen Wright not with flowers but tales of his vegetablegrowing adventures. Growing up in France, he’d spent time with his great-grandmother who lived off her small vegetable garden in Brittany: ‘To see that this was possible, living in this very modest way, planted a seed,’ he says. Imogen’s own childhood was a full immersion in nature, after her parents relocated from London to a 10-acre plot in Devon, where they planned to be self-sufficient. ‘It was all about being covered in soil, dirt, digging up potatoes, climbing up apple trees and moving sheep,’ she remembers.
After meeting as fashion students at Central Saint Martins and forming their sustainable womenswear label in 2017, the pair have made their own move to the countryside, setting up their studio in a barn in Devon. ‘We quickly slipped into a routine and the slower pace and had time to reflect,’ says Imogen. In their polytunnel and outdoor beds, they grow peas, lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, beans and pumpkins, as well as borage, cosmos and marigolds to sustain bees and pollinators.
‘It’s about working with nature and seeing what we can do to attract more wildlife,’ adds Imogen, who has been inspired by Isabella Tree’s memoir of rewilding Knepp, her Sussex estate. ‘I’m interested in her experimental approach of giving space to nature and incorporating that into our small plot.’
Both speak enthusiastically about how their return to the land has given their design work renewed focus. ‘It’s a slow approach: you nurture the soil, you plant a seed, quite a lot will die but it will give you all this feedback and that’s very similar to our design process,’ says Imogen. ‘We started our brand because we wanted it to be responsible and to think about ways to work within fashion that was better for the environment. All of this reinforces that. But it’s also really inspiring creatively with the colours, textures and forms.’
Leading a simpler life has, says Vincent, given them more focus, too. ‘When we moved, we had few possessions: just some clothes and not many other things to take away our
“Everyone who visits goes home with a basketful of VEGETABLES”
attention. There are many parallels with design and nature – you have the beauty but also the labour and the practical side. They both teach you that you need patience and time.’
IMOGEN AND VINCENT’S GROWING ADVICE
Be patient, carefully observe and don’t be scared to make mistakes – nature will give you feedback pretty quickly. Grow things to share. We give away eggs and vegetables. Make use of any space you have. You can grow on a windowsill and it’s amazing to see those first seeds sprout.
ALEX EAGLE Creative director of Alex Eagle Studio
Alex Eagle’s impeccably furnished flat in the heart of Soho is a regular backdrop for her Instagram posts and the beating heart of her retail and design empire. But as soon as her children Jack, four, and Coco, two, were born, she longed for her own green patch. ‘I barely even feel the seasons living in London. It gets too much and we need to reconnect, take our shoes off, feel the grass and look up at the stars,’ says Alex, whose Cotswolds cottage is an English idyll with a stream, wildflower meadow, treehouse and rolling hills. ‘It’s a real antidote to the city and felt more and more relevant with children.’
As a complete novice, she initially got help with her garden – but rather than just hand over the secateurs for good, she used the opportunity to learn. ‘I still don’t know much but I’m definitely on a path,’ she says. For her family, growing food has been one of the joys of the past year. ‘Kitchen gardens are my big thing – I get really inspired by Chateau Villandry’s incredible kitchen garden on the Loire, even if my own is on a very different scale. I love being able to take vegetables straight from the garden to the kitchen and everyone who visits goes home with a basketful. You feel like you’ve given them the best treat ever.’
Alex has memories of visiting her grandfather in
Norfolk and feasting on gooseberries, raspberries and wild strawberries from the garden, and she wants to instil the same passion in her own children. ‘My dad teaches Jack to plant things and he’s patient but strict and they really respond to that,’ she says. ‘Jack feels in control: he watches it grow, he goes to check up on it. For a four-year-old, it gives him a great sense of achievement.’
Her vegetable-growing adventure has been turbo charged over the past year while she’s been working on the redesign of Oakley Court, a 19th-century gothic hotel in Windsor. ‘I realised that the exterior presented more opportunities than the inside,’ she says. Having a bountiful vegetable garden has also made her realise how aesthetically pleasing edible produce can be, too. ‘I’m practical and utilitarian across everything – whether it’s clothes or gardens, so it ticks so many boxes for me,’ she says. ‘Even growing an artichoke is a joy – it’s so decorative and beautiful.’
ALEX’S CREATIVE SUGGESTIONS
Let grass grow long – it makes the garden really low maintenance and it’s amazing seeing which wildflowers will pop up. It’s also brilliant for wildlife. Clothes need to be practical.
I love the Labour And Wait x Lavenham gilet (lavenhamjackets. com) – it has useful pockets.
Or I wear a siren suit, which just gets better with age.
Beautiful baskets are part of the pleasure of growing vegetables – Berdoulat (berdoulat.co.uk) has the most beautiful one.
“I get more ideas from what grows in pavement cracks than from GARDENS”
OLIVIA MORRIS Founder of Olivia Morris At Home
Flowers have always been central to Olivia Morris’ work. ‘They bring me joy whether they’re in the garden, on a textile print or influencing a colour palette,’ the shoe designer says from her office, which is covered with shamrock wallpaper from Stockholm. Last year, Morris introduced her first collection of house shoes, each named after a favourite bloom, with many featuring chintzy floral prints. ‘It’s my way of having that cottage garden in a collection, because I can’t in real life.’
Four years ago, Olivia, her husband Nathan and children Percy, 10, and Daphne, five, moved to a Victorian house that perches on a clifftop overlooking the south coast at St Leonards-on-Sea. The views through the mature Monterey cypress trees at the bottom of her garden are spectacular – the conditions, extreme. ‘The site is so tricky that it had to spawn more interest in gardening – we had to work with the climate and the plot, which is a really sharp incline.’
They put their savings into landscaping the space, then enlisted former fashion designer-turned-gardener Marc O’Neill to do the planting design, which includes tough wild roses, dwarf pines, cordylines, salvias and lavender. ‘We’re learning so much about plants that work here,’ says Olivia, who visited Derek Jarman’s windswept beachside garden at Dungeness to understand what could work in her space.
Until the move to the sea, her interest had been more aesthetic: her Kensal Rise garden was decorated with pots from Clifton Nurseries. It was about ‘having friends around, sitting outside and partying’. But moving out of the city with her children, every Friday was then spent at a playgroup held at the famous East Sussex garden Great Dixter. ‘It was an excuse to head there on a weekly basis and, no matter the season, there was always something beautiful.’ It’s helped her to understand succession planting (always having something flowering) and seasonality. She’s also become a guerrilla gardener, collecting seeds on walks to grow at home. ‘I love the colour of wild poppies. And the satisfaction when you nurture something – it’s a lovely feeling.’ The real payback is summer evenings in the garden. ‘We cook fresh fish on the fire pit and I bring down Moroccan rugs so it’s cosy underfoot – it is glorious.’
OLIVIA’S LANDSCAPE RECOMMENDATIONS
Visit gardens to get ideas. I’ve been inspired by Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill Farm and seeing how vegetables are laid on a slope. See what’s growing in your area. I get ideas from what’s sprouting from pavement cracks as much as landscaped gardens. Vegetables can be as beautiful as flowers. We dot edible plants through the garden rather than having a specific area.
Find unusual things at plant fairs. I bought a pink elderberry at Great Dixter; we’re hoping to make cordial this summer.