House Designer

A garden that looks good only in summer is a garden working half as hard as it could. This is something I tell every client when we’re planning their planting scheme. Evergreen plants are what hold a garden together when everything else has disappeared. They provide structure, colour, and texture across all four seasons, including the months when herbaceous plants are complet...

Richmond is one of those parts of London where the housing stock does a lot of the heavy lifting. The Edwardian detached homes that line its quieter streets come with high ceilings, generous rooms, and the kind of original architectural detail that most people spend years trying to replicate elsewhere. The challenge is never the bones of the house. It is making it feel like a...

For the first time in years, I wasn’t walking the RHS Chelsea showground myself, and I missed it. No early morning wander through the gardens before the crowds arrived, no seeing the planting catch the light in real time, no standing in front of a border trying to identify every single plant.

Mirela Bajic gives expert commentary for Best M...

North-facing gardens often get a bad reputation. The assumption is that without direct sunlight you cannot have a beautiful garden, that shade means compromise, and that the best you can hope for is a collection of ferns and not much else. In my experience, none of that is true.

When Country Living asked me to share my advice on

Green is having a moment, but honestly it never really left. Unlike a lot of colours that cycle in and out of interiors trends, green has a staying power that most other shades do not. It sits somewhere between a neutral and a statement, which means it can work quietly in the background or become the defining feature of a room depending on how you use it.

The tricky pa...