FLORAL WONDERLAND The beauty of the outdoors has been brought inside in a garden designer’s New York home
A New York-based couple have turned a Brooklyn townhouse into a stunning family home, abundant with greenery and colourful blooms
Despite its small garden, the Neo-grec brownstone house in Brooklyn, New York, instantly charmed British-born landscape designer Miranda Brooks when she first saw it. She and her husband, architect Bastien Halard, were looking to move from Manhattan, and the 19th-century property, laid out over four floors and with a little carriage house at the end of the garden, fitted the bill perfectly. A complete renovation was embarked upon, managed by Bastien alongside his work, and Miranda undertook the transformation of the garden, creating a verdant oasis from what had been an unpromising paved space. Though many of her commissions have been the design of grand gardens for the well-heeled – including
American Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s Hamptons retreat –
Miranda’s love of naturalistic planting and desire to bring a sense of intrigue, in which not every part of the garden is visible at once, is every bit as magical in small spaces.
An early intention to stick to a pared-back palette was soon jettisoned in favour of lush planting and an abundance of colour. Here, poppies and daisy-like erigeron pop up among roses, lilies, and tulips for a traditional country feel that could be a million miles away from the bustle and noise of the city just beyond the wall.
The rooftop garden, however, is a different story. Featuring beautifully organised beds inspired by Elizabethan gardens, it includes a mix of annuals and vegetables as well as herbs, dog roses and honeysuckles. Many of these, in addition to the scented geraniums Miranda grows in the greenhouse she has managed to squeeze in, find their way indoors in the stunning arrangements that she places throughout the house.
And it’s not just in the displays of branches, bulbs and flowers that a sense of the botanical is evident. It can be seen in the Marthe Armitage hand-printed wallpapers in the girls’ rooms – Violette Grey has horse chestnuts and Poppy has birds and butterflies – while a custom de Gournay Tree of Life design decorates the main bedroom
– even a set of doors features a flowering vine hand-drawn by a friend. But these scenes of natural beauty didn’t necessarily come easily. In the transformation of their home, the colour schemes were down to Miranda, but many of the other decisions involved fierce debate between her and Bastien. The result, however, is a harmonious look that seems rooted in the property’s history, and with all the charm that Bastien was determined to include.
By exposing the rafters and painting the wooden floors, he’s created a relaxed and informal backdrop that perfectly enhances the happy mix of recycled and time-worn pieces from vintage fairs, as well as quirky and interesting treasures sourced abroad. In the kitchen, for instance, Tolix chairs and a table created from a piece of marble on steel I-beams came from a Paris flea market. In order to create a room that felt more like a living area than a purely functional space, the couple decided to forgo wall cabinets for artworks, much of it done by friends, while Miranda’s substantial collection of china is housed in a huge unit topped with 300-year-old white oak.
Referencing Miranda and Bastien’s heritages, the first floor has been decorated with a French aesthetic in mind – featuring a traditional chevron-pattern parquet flooring typical of Parisian apartments – and the middle floor with an English look. However it’s at the top of this townhouse where the couple’s styles meld.
This New York-inspired zone is home to a fabulous combination of traditional and designer elements. This is perfectly illustrated in the bathroom, with the inclusion of an eighteenth-century Swedish carved bench that Miranda bought at auction, and a hanging light created by Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld in the early part of the 20th century, which Bastien bought online.
Like the kitchen, the bathroom is more than just a functional space – designed for relaxation, it features an elegant navy-painted rolltop bath, comfortable upholstered seating, and simple shelves built by Bastien, holding an array of books. The couple spend much of their time up here and it’s where they catch up at the end of the day. They believe this area, where their tastes meet, to be the most successful part of their interior – a little creative tension, perhaps, being an essential ingredient in creating such a harmonious result.
The KITCHEN walls are covered in ART – most of it by the couple’s FRIENDS
The BATHROOM is more than just a FUNCTIONAL SPACE – it’s designed for RELAXING