NOTHING COULD BE BETTER

her brushes. The approvals process still took five months, but it was worth the delay. “You need a bathroom because, as soon as you go back to the house, you’re doing the dishes,” she says. “Even if you live alone, home has so many obligations that suck you in. None of that exists here.”

Virginia credits the new studio for her being able to finish her latest book, which will be published by Artisan Books next year. “I could not have done it without this space,” she says. “Commuting” through her garden, plus her intimate connection to it through the studio’s glass doors, inspired Virginia to write about reimagining her green space. “I go deep into the story of how I put the garden together and the choices I made,” she says.

“I’m an amateur gardener, so it was all about shape, colour and textures.”

True to Virginia’s initial intention, however, the studio is not just a place for commercial pursuits and productivity. “It’s sometimes just a getaway,” she says. On a recent morning, she sat at the old refectory table she uses as a desk and read the paper with a cup of tea. When the mood strikes, she lies down on the vintage daybed and looks at the trees through the skylights above. Before the studio was built, Virginia treasured these quiet moments. Now, she truly values them. “Being quiet and reflective, painting and doing things that aren’t funnelling into a business has been really significant to me. It really is about valuing your creativity and enabling it.”

When I leave and walk back down the pea gravel pathway, Virginia is getting ready to work on sketches for a new shawl collection and wallpaper designs due out in the fall. But if she ends up doing nothing, that will be quite something, too.