Natural calling
Located just outside London, horticultural dining destination Petersham Nurseries embodies the passions and beliefs of Australian expat Gael Boglione and her forward-thinking family. By Katrina Israel. Photographed by Andrew Montgomery.
Petersham Nurseries embodies the passions and beliefs of Gael Boglione and her family.
Astone’s throw from London, between Ham, village-like Richmond, and the banks of the River Thames, lies Petersham Nurseries. The garden centre, glasshouse restaurant and Edenic retreat is a 20-year labour of love from Australian expat Gael Boglione, her Italian husband, Francesco, and their extended family. The venture bloomed from a small nursery at the bottom of their garden into an internationally renowned destination. Now a new book, Petersham Nurseries, charts its flowering from humble beginnings to lifestyle brand.
“We certainly weren’t planning on running a garden centre, and would have been surprised had anyone told us that it lay in our future,” writes Boglione in the lavish volume that combines the family’s narrative with season-focused recipes and exquisite photography by Andrew Montgomery.
At the time of this story, Boglione is sequestered at the 15thcentury Tuscan home of her eldest daughter, Lara (now Petersham’s managing director), as they await the birth of her third child. “I wrote the book for us, and for posterity in a way, because I’m very proud of it and wanted something to show our grandchildren,” she says. “It’s such a family business. All my children are involved.”
More than just a botanical paradise and wunderkammer of eclectic antiques and interior treasures plucked from around Europe, the nursery serves as a meeting place and platform to showcase the family’s ideas about sustainable food and farming. A pioneer of Britain’s slow-food movement championing chemical-free, ethical agriculture, its renowned cafe draws inspiration from the changing seasons. “Since I was 17, I always cared about what I ate, about produce, about the planet,” Boglione says. “Petersham is all part of what we have done in our lives in a way.” She is equally passionate about design. “Normally I’m in there every day changing things. I go really over the top sometimes. I set a table at dinnertime and no one can see each other,” she says, laughing.
Boglione’s curiosity about style is precisely where the Petersham story begins. “I was actually watching cricket at Mick Jagger’s house,” she recalls. “I never understood cricket, and Mick said to me: ‘There’s this house down the road that’s really interesting, but I’ve just done this house and quite frankly I can’t be bothered.’ It was a threeminute walk. I’ll never forget it. I pulled myself over the high fence and fell in love with it. I had four kids in central London and being Australian I just wanted space.”
The purchase in 1997 saw the family relocate from South Kensington and begin a painstaking five-year renovation of Petersham House. Built circa 1640, it had been a hunting lodge for the nearby Richmond Park. “It was beautiful even then – those Georgian houses with simple bones. But inside it was a mishmash. The previous owners thought it would be fabulous to have great swathes of fabric, so you could barely see out the windows. We simplified everything with new plumbing, new electrics.”
Six years later the small plant centre at the end of their garden came up for sale. “It was a working nursery, with concrete floors and incredible vegetables growing, but it wasn’t aesthetically beautiful,” Boglione recalls. “Somebody did want to buy it and put in a bungalow, and we were rather nervous about that.”
Did she have a green thumb? “No, I have the vision of green thumbs,” Boglione says. “I love planting, but I’m not a horticulturist.” Her husband was an insurance broker at Lloyds at the time. “When we were about to buy it I said to Francesco: ‘This is a bit mad!’ I was relieved when the previous owners said that they would stay on for a year and oversee it.”
Initially, they fumbled their way through. The concrete was replaced with Petersham’s nowsignature hoggin floors, while the garden centre’s greenhouses were painted greenish-black. They now house the cafe, nursery, homewares and furniture shop and teahouse. Francesco’s love of antiquing helped foster the centre’s reputation for vintage collectibles.
You’re greeted by a retired horse-drawn cart planted with perennial blooms. In the greenhouses, bougainvillea, jasmine and weeping wisteria vines jostle for sunlight, while zinc-topped tables and mismatched metal chairs encourage impromptu groupings. Outside, the kitchen garden grows chicory, dandelion leaves, borlotti beans and pansies.
Boglione grew up in Melbourne and moved to Paris just shy of her 18th birthday after winning a modelling competition to work for fashion designer Nina Ricci. “It was very daunting, but I always had an adventurous spirit,” she says. “I was doing house modelling for people like Jackie Onassis and having a terrible time – my eyelashes wouldn’t stay on and my hat would fall off. It was not me at all.”
“IT’S SUCH A FAMILY BUSINESS … PETERSHAM IS ALL PART OF WHAT WE HAVE DONE IN OUR LIVES IN A WAY”
A six-month stint in Morocco followed, before a visit to London led to her putting down roots and an introduction to Francesco. “He was a businessman on first appearances with his tailored suits handmade in Italy,” she says. “I was friends with wild musicians, but was fascinated by him because he was very different.” As it turns out, appearances were deceiving: “He did have a huge past of being an extraordinary traveller and a bit of a hippie in those days. He drove all the way from London to Afghanistan and was based in India and Kabul for five years. We found that we were quite similar in our love of travelling and really being in a place and living it.”
This shared appreciation of cultures and a mutual concern for the planet are at the core of the Petersham experience. “I’m seriously anti-GM sprays and I’ve always fed my children organic food,” Boglione says. She was part of Parents for Safe Food founded by Pamela Stephenson, Billy Connolly’s wife. “It’s a passion of mine,” she says. “So there was only one way to do the nursery.” Her son Harry now has a certified organic farm in Devon that uses agroecology (sustainable farming that works with nature). He has been supplying the business for the past four years and also helps with sourcing additional produce from other small farms in England.
The initial idea for the restaurant itself was just as organic. “I said to Skye (Gyngell, then a private chef): ‘I want to do a beautiful English teahouse. Maybe you have some thoughts on it?’ She said: ‘Forget a teahouse. Let’s do a restaurant.’”
The Australian-born chef, who helmed the kitchen for seven years, describes it as a pivotal moment for her. “The minute I saw it I fell in love and offered to cook there,” reflects Gyngell. “It is such a magical location.” They started with three dishes and 25 seats. Months later Francesco’s vintage Ferrari got evicted from a shed to create a kitchen. The project grew to 25 dishes, 60 covers and a waitlist.
In 2011, with 120 covers, the cafe was awarded a Michelin star. “Something like Petersham Nurseries comes around for a cook once in a lifetime,” says Gyngell. “It changed everything for me.”
The success in Richmond inspired an offshoot, Petersham Nurseries Covent Garden, in 2018. “My daughter said: ‘Mama, I don’t want to work at the back of our garden for the rest of my life.’ And I said: ‘Fair enough!’ Lara put it together,” Boglione says of the London oasis that spans two restaurants, a delicatessen, florist, shop and cellar. “It’s a huge amount of work because it’s more of a corporate situation, with landlords and rates that we don’t have in Richmond because it’s ours.”
That said, community and family remain at the centre of each project the Bogliones take on, whether building a sensory garden for children with special needs, or supporting Refugee Action, The Prince’s Trust or their late friend Mark Shand’s Elephant Family charity. “There’s no point to life if you can’t do things like that,” she says. The family has also had plenty of fun taking Petersham on the road to the Wilderness music festival and Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. “I would adore something in Sydney,” she says, of the harbour city where they have a home in Palm Beach.
But as London reopens, Boglione is absolutely content in her nursery. “I wouldn’t have opened a restaurant without the plants,” she says. “And it’s just getting more and more beautiful. I’m never bored. It gives me joy, every single day of my life.”
The Bogliones’ Petersham Nurseries (Pimpernel Press, $150) is out now.