What Interior Designers Can Learn From Wild Gardens
Two kinds of gardens come to mind when we think of Spring. There's the conventional, pristine, perfected, pruned, and performative garden that's been shaped to be a microcosm of the kind of life the owner wants others to assume they live. Then there's the kind of gardens we find comfort in with joy and relief. These gardens have roses that grew over the gate without asking permission and the grass was long in the places the lawnmower couldn't reach. And there was always a place to sit and have a drink, or enjoy lunch and a great conversation with someone you love, or even just lose yourself in a new book.
That garden wasn't an accident, but it wasn't exactly a plan either. It was usually the result of years of things being added and nothing being taken away, just reshaped. There's maybe a swing that stayed after the kids grew up and now the grandkids come over to visit and can't wait to use it. The chairs have patina thanks to weathering the years of ownership. There's all of these little intricacies that you can't fake and can't buy or recreate with a mood board because this kind of garden is underwritten by time and intention.
It's the depth that the garden has, and that same depth is what we believe interiors need most this spring.
Why Homes Designed for Real Life Feel Better Over Time
I think somewhere along the way in the last decade, we developed the necessary pattern recognition to make interiors look finished. We picked up neutrals, perfectly curated pieces, we placed them in a way that nothing would feel out of place, all so our rooms would look incredible in photographs, even if they felt like nothing in person. For many, it's like standing inside of someone else's idea of what a beautiful space looks like rather than actually being in one; we've opted in for correct spaces while ignoring the fact that they also feel like empty ones. Much like that first garden.
The problem we run into adopting that habit is its contrary to our reality. Life is messy. Alive things are messy. Nature grows in "the wrong" direction sometimes and the light on the light that comes in our window from the sun changes every hour, and we have no control over any of it; the best we can do is respond to it. The great English gardeners, Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, rejected that pristine Victorian era style and pushed their philosophy that a garden should look as if plants wanted to be there, and that their wildness was a condition of their beauty, not an opposition to it. That same philosophy extends to how we design our homes this season.
The Return of Depth Texture and Imperfection This Spring
The rooms that embody spring right now aren't the ones with fresh white walls and a single vase of flowers on the kitchen island. They're the ones that look like the life in the garden has made its way through the windows and into the homes: deep color walls, layers of texture that don't match perfectly but complement each other in their imperfection, historical light fixtures, brass hardware that exude warmth, and glass that catches the afternoon light and throws it somewhere unexpected.
That's what Moody Spring means to us. It's not more saturation for its own sake. It's the color weight of a May afternoon in a garden where nothing is pruned back yet, the petals are fresh and full of color, and memories made in this space come rushing back to the surface.
Why the Most Memorable Homes Never Feel Completely Finished
Just like the homes that you'll never forget because part of their charm was their imperfection. They always had something that didn't quite match whether it was the chairs that didn't belong to the same collection as the breakfast table or a table lamp that became the signature of a particular corner of the room. I'd argue that's the difference between a room, and just a space; a space is controlled and perfected, while a room has history and grows in depth organically, and over time.
So don't be afraid to get moody this season. Embrace a little more depth in your color palette, your inner wild child, and a little bit of beautiful disorder while denying that itch to constantly correct things. The best homes, like the best gardens, are ones where you feel like you could stay there all afternoon and nobody is going to rush you or ask you to leave.