Mish Tworkowski Embarks on a Botanical Grand Tour in the Verdant Countryside
Jevery gardener needs to see the great gardens of England,” says jewelry designer and lifelong horticulturist Mish Tworkowski, who set out across the small country last year, zigzagging between public Edens and humbler house gardens. “The English are probably the best gardeners on the planet. They have the ideal climate, of course, but I also think there’s something in their DNA that predisposes them to love the soil.”
His botanical pilgrimage was steered, in part, by friend Aaron Bertelsen of
the East Sussex oasis Tworkowski calls a plantsman’s and designer’s paradise, where “flowers are falling over the walks, plants topple over one another, and combinations are wild and unexpected. It’s a true English experience,” says the jewelry designer, who grew up experimenting in the dirt with his parents. Still, his immersive journey wasn’t just a gardener’s pilgrimage. “The natural world is so important to me creatively,” he adds. “You get to explore the possibilities of color, texture, form, and light, and get lost in them.” The key is resisting the urge to photograph everything. “Part of being a good designer is knowing how to let go—to let the moment flood into your head and wait for it to show up later. That’s the beauty of it.”
Whether tracing the wide herbaceous borders of polished oases like or reveling in the romance of unfolding paths and stairways—“bringing one of my favorite feelings from a garden, that of intimacy”—these tableaux are where we draw the most inspiration, he contends. “For me, gardens are spiritual places. They are about hope and small experiments and a beauty that’s both fleeting and permanent.”