GARDEN STATE
Garden designer Butter Wakefield has created a flower-filled slice of the country in the city at her plush London home
Garden designer Butter Wakefield’s London home is a slice of the country in the city
There was a time when stamford Brook in west London was a remote hamlet consisting of a patchwork of market gardens, fields and stretches of heath. But as the city grew, the village gradually turned from farmland to thoroughfare. however, there is one particular garden that harks back to that more bucolic era.
Butter Wakefield’s garden is filled with an abundance of foxgloves, roses and geraniums; a wildflower meadow sweeps across the centre of the lawn, which is framed by clipped box pyramids. disguised behind a trellis is her workstation – crates overflow with knapweed and daisies and there are planters of salvia and cow parsley.
It should come as no surprise that Butter is a garden designer. she grew up on a small farm outside Baltimore in Maryland, surrounded by dogs and ponies. ‘My upbringing is entirely responsible for my job,’ she says. ‘My mother and aunt were mad about their gardens and my grandfather was a great plantsman who instilled such magic in his surroundings.’
having worked in new York, Butter moved to London in 1988, where she was an interior-design assistant at colefax and Fowler. ‘It was there that I gained a true understanding of design, form, scale, texture and colour,’ she says. It is a knowledge that has proved invaluable to her work and has also been put to good use in her house. she moved from interiors to exteriors in 1992.
Butter and her now ex-husband bought the Victorian villa ‘for a song’ in 1991. ‘The kitchen was so poky, you could barely open the oven. But we saw it in spring when the light was pouring in across the west-facing garden and we just fell in love,’ she recalls. The kitchen is far from poky now, helped partly by the addition of an elegant conservatory. ‘It is essential to have the garden as much inside as possible,’ says
Butter, hence the large sash window and the stable door.
Black and white flooring in oversize checks unites the two spaces. ‘I blame the floor,’ she says. ‘That’s where it all started.’ she is referring to the palette of green, black and white that runs throughout much of the house, but comes to the fore in the kitchen and conservatory, where there is a cornucopia of lettuceware plates and monochromatic fabrics. a smart green window seat is luxuriously heated by the radiator below and is the perfect spot from which to contemplate the garden.
‘We couldn’t afford to hang cupboards in the kitchen, so we covered the walls in black-framed prints and paintings. They are pieces that I’ve collected over the years – some are very good but others are virtually postcards,’ she says. It is a clever trick
that, teamed with the tongue-and-groove panelling, gives the space a cottage feel.
a pattern of oversize palm leaves by cole & son clambers through the hall and up the stairs; the section below the dado rail is painted in pea green and a black and white runner continues Butter’s favoured colour theme. The two-part sitting room is painted a restrained shade of grey, but a zingy applegreen blind and fabrics in shades of blue lift the palette, as does the endless vases filled with flowers. ‘one of my greatest pleasures is having fresh flowers in the house,’ she says. ‘There is really nothing nicer.’ not a room in this house escapes without a botanical print or a floral pattern. The walls in the sitting rooms are decked out with landscapes by annabel Fairfax and Kirsty Wither. ‘When I finish a job, if there’s a little extra cash left and a wall space winking at me, I won’t buy jewels, I’ll buy a painting,’ says Butter.
Butter’s house and garden is a place of bounty and comfort: the furniture is positively plump; there are layers upon layers of fabric; and the garden sings with colour and scent. The city may heave and swarm beyond the front door, but this is a place in which to escape; a small slice of the countryside both inside and out.