INDIVIDUAL INTERIORS
Effortlessly bringing the countryside into the city
From a botanical villa to a mid-century retreat, this month’s houses are an inspiring read
From the bold palm frond wallpaper in the hallway to the mass of framed botanical prints on the kitchen walls, every room in garden designer Butter Wakefield’s home features foliage and flowers. A shelf in the conservatory is filled with lettuceware china, while floral motifs appear in the paintings on the walls and as pattern on fabric. There are flowers in vases wherever there is a ledge, sill or table top.
This is not how her home has always looked, she says. The catalyst for change was her divorce a couple of years ago; the drawing room ceiling fell down about the same time and, where most people would have buckled under the strain, Butter, ever the optimist, saw a decorating opportunity. ‘ I thought – this is my cue! I can get rid of all
his furniture and the decor can be as crazy as I want, without anybody saying, “I really think you’ve got enough green.”’
The overall effect is delightfully easy on the eye, which is no surprise – Butter’s # rst job on arriving in London from her native America, 30 years ago, was as an assistant interior designer at Colefax and Fowler. She moved into garden design four years later in order to spend more time with her children. Her Victorian villa is testament to her love of interior design and her abiding ‘obsession with $owers’. She has designed each room to complement the views of her garden, which she conceived as a slice of the English countryside in the heart of the city. The palette she chose for the house, which is dominated by greens ranging from so% sage through to vibrant emerald, is unexpectedly fresh and lively, and her bold use of black and white holds it all together.
In the double sitting room, the combination of twin marble # replaces, ornate cornicing and dove grey walls provides an elegant, neutral backdrop for paintings by John Pawle and Eardley Knollys. A plumped-up, pin-striped sofa, linen cushions and sisal $ooring add to the easy and relaxed ambience. ‘ When we moved in, the # replaces were mean and miserable wooden surrounds, so we replaced them with these, and what I love about them is the depth, which gives me a surface,’ she says. ‘ It’s all about table-top landscaping for me, creating pretty vistas on a side table or a surface –
a ! replace with depth adds grandeur to a room, as well as scale.’ As does Butter’s use of #owers – she buys huge, statement blooms from the #ower companies at New Covent Garden Market, displaying them in apothecary-style jars where they become fabulous, oversized focal points, creating a sense of occasion wherever they are placed.
Smaller in scale, though no less fabulous, #owers from her garden ! ll the kitchen – snipped from her borders and popped into jugs and jars, they change on a daily basis. ‘ It’s the small touches that make a house a home,’ she says. Originally a skinny galley with an adjoining music room, the kitchen now has a stable door that perfectly frames the flowery mini meadow beyond. To maximise the view through it, Butter tossed out the dining chairs and replaced them with two long benches, which she dressed up with zebra-print cushions in lime.
In place of the more usual cupboards, the kitchen walls are tightly packed with all manner of botanical prints, which Butter has gathered over time. ‘ I put up pictures years ago because I couldn’t a $ord
hanging like every subject visual not corner,’ theme matter, having cupboards that she there units says. links and is taking Beyond another all now the up I rather the pictures, frame. ‘A explains lot of the Butter: pictures a black are postcards and others are very good prints or paintings, but it’s the combination of them all in black frames that makes it work.’
The conservatory, which was added 10 years ago, is another way of bringing the beautiful garden indoors. The huge sash window, with a comfortable seat beneath, is the perfect spot from which she can admire the magnolia tree just the other side of the glass. Instead of the predictable bank of hothouse "owers, Butter has created a cool retreat with cushions covered in vibrant green velvet and geometric black and white fabrics. Glazed pots on either side of the plumped-up, pale grey sofa hold ferns that emerge from beds of moss.
There is much here to distract the eye, notably one of Butter’s many collections of china, which is displayed in a decorative plate
The conservatory is another way of bringing the garden indoors… it’s the perfect spot from which to admire the magnolia.
rack. ‘It’s all Wedgwood and I jumped for joy when I found them on Portobello Road – I do love a bit of china! I have a pink lustreware thing going on in the kitchen, but my latest craze is silver lustre – I’m on the hunt for it all the time.’
Butter’s house is like walking into a country garden on a summer’s day and this impression continues upstairs. In the main bedroom, the walls are painted pale leaf green, the window blind is a lively lime and white print, while white cabbage roses decorate the cushions on a bed dressed in pristine white linen. In the guest bedroom, acid green viburnum blooms look stunning on a striking black and white chest of drawers, inset with mother- of-pearl.
The palm leaf print that flourishes above the dado rail in the entrance hall and up the stairs was a brave move, but a worthwhile one for Butter, who sees it as a way of easing in guests to what lies beyond. ‘ To me, it just screams happiness,’ she says. ‘ The greens are introducing you to the rest of the house, saying: “Be prepared – here we go!”’