What my home means to me
Garden designer and presenter of ITV’s Love Your Garden, Katie, 33, lives in Baildon, West Yorkshire, with husband Andrew, 41, and their two daughters
Garden designer Katie Rushworth
WHERE I LIVE
My heart sank when I first saw this house. It is a traditional Yorkshire stone property on the outside, with new-build perfection on the inside – but the problem was the long line of other would-be buyers who appeared to love it as much as we did. It’s the only time I’ve traded on the fact I’m a TV garden designer. The original owners lived next door, so I was able to announce big plans for the garden – and luckily they chose us as buyers!
A new-build house in a traditional old style is perfect: the roof is Yorkshire stone and already gathering moss, which is great, but inside we have underfloor heating and the windows are so airtight we hardly ever use the sitting room woodburning stove.
I’m a perfectionist so when we moved in, in April 2015, I wanted everything done instantly. I didn’t like the dining room wallpaper so that came off within two days and we now have a rich foliage design by Osborne & Little.
The living room looks out onto the front garden, and has a door leading to the kitchen/dining room and cinema room. We kept the cream, grey and blue colours that were there originally as they link beautifully with the Yorkshire sky, the lilac flowers in the garden and the moors in the distance. I designed our dining table myself and found a carpenter to make it with steel legs and a top from reclaimed floorboards. My kitchen is glossy and neutral with white units and stainless steel. The only colour comes from all my cookery books and my husband’s coffee machine – which looks like the starship Enterprise!
Andrew and I met in 2014 and married in July 2016 at an old farm in North Yorkshire. I dressed 12 white birch trees with fairy lights, and we’ve replanted two in our front garden – a living memory of our wonderful day.
The garden has changed massively since we moved in, when it was mud and a few shrubs. Any plants left over from Love Your Garden ended up there. I love plants and could fill the garden with hundreds of different types, but the designer in me knows that wouldn’t look good!
MY INSPIRATIONS Nature is my biggest inspiration. I have a collection of butterflies in cases, with bug ornaments and antlers dotted around the house, and old botanical prints on the walls. I love items with sentimental
value. I’ve kept three sea holly heads from the first bouquet of flowers my husband ever bought me. From our travels we have a print of Spanish foods from Barcelona in the kitchen, a light fitting in our cinema from an Amsterdam vintage store and our ceramic tableware is from Japan.
We collect posters from music gigs and framed the one from the Future Islands concert we went to on our second date. Recently, we saw John Grant and Nick Cave so their posters will go up in the hall.
I grew up on a council estate in Leeds and, although my mum Sheena kept her garden tidy, it was my grandad’s amazing front yard filled with colourful containers and window boxes that inspired me. My grandma once won Best Container Garden and they were always outside enjoying their tiny plot to the full.
My favourite plants are the grass miscanthus, with foliage that comes up early and develops big wands of seed plumes. I love delicate thalictrum (above) and its sprays of lilac blooms, and beautiful purple salvia flowers.
HOME LIFE
The family den is our cinema room, with its enormous screen and big grey Chesterfield-style sofa. For Andrew’s 40th birthday, I bought him two vintage cinema seats and had them covered in a fabric printed with the distinctive pattern from the carpet in The Shining, one of his favourite films.
Music and vinyl records are a love we all share. There’s a record player and set of old pigeonholes to store my husband’s LPs in the cinema room, and the kitchen has a black upright piano, which my husband and daughter play. My mother used to give me jobs as she cooked and, as a family, we gravitate to the kitchen where we chat as we prepare big meals. It’s a bright social space and most of our time is spent there. HB ● Katie’s book Plants, Beds
and Borders (£16.99, Kyle Books) is available now