COURTESY OF JAMES SANSUM

JAMES SANSUM

James Sansum’s gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan offers an expertly curated selection of European furniture and decorative objects, as well as artwork ranging from Old Master drawings to Asian scrolls to contemporary paintings. A dealer for more than three decades, the erudite Sansum cultivates a masterful mix of classical refinement and modern energy.

jamessansum.com

COURTESY OF ALCOTT INTERIORS

ALCOTT INTERIORS

Carolyn Kendall is not only a well-regarded Nashville interior designer, but she also has a beautiful shop in Hillsboro Village. She travels to Europe regularly to source antiques in Paris, Rome, Milan, and the French countryside. She also buys from dealers stateside and at auction to curate a rich and varied selection of treasures.

alcottinteriors.com

COURTESY OF B. VIZ DESIGN

B. VIZ DESIGN

Rebecca Vizard is revered for her exquisite collection of antique textiles, from Ottoman Empire gold ecclesiastical embroidery and 17th-century Flemish tapestries to vintage Fortuny fabrics and Uzbekistan suzanis, all of which she preserves, repairs, and often repurposes as beautiful pillows. She has an atelier in New Orleans where her rare finds are prized for their artistry, authenticity, and hand-sewn craftsmanship.

bvizdesign.com

The post What We’re Looking Forward to at the Antiques & Garden Show in Nashville appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

Blessed with a childhood nickname that stuck, garden designer Butter Wakefield practices her craft with fine strokes of vivid color, like an artist wielding a brush. The American-born designer grew up in a family of horticultural enthusiasts on a small farm outside of Baltimore, Maryland; after college, she landed at Christie’s auction house in New York City, where her love of all things beautiful began. She later married an Englishman, moved to London, and found employment at the great British decorating firm Colefax and Fowler, where, she recalls, “I really started to understand texture and scale and color and pattern.” In a five-bedroom Victorian house located near Ravenscourt Park in London, she raised four children with her now ex-husband. “Having spent a lot of time thinking about the inside of the house, it occurred to me that the garden needed just as much attention,” she says. “And so the seed was sown.”

The back door surround was added for architectural interest and painted in Farrow & Ball’s Down Pipe.

Simon Brown

In a secret corner of the garden, the potting table holds apple crates full of wildflowers; Wakefield added the round mirror.

Simon Brown

“I like a tangle of flowers and texture so you are surrounded by scent and bloom and foliage and climbing plants” says Wakefield.

Simon Brown

Wakefield now runs her own flourishing garden design business, favoring a more traditional style when it comes to her work. “I love very flowery designs, but they must have structure,” she explains. “Within the solid shapes, I like a tangle of flowers and texture so you are surrounded by scent and bloom and foliage and climbing plants.” Sustainability also plays a role: Wakefield incorporates plants that attract pollinators and uses reclaimed materials whenever possible.

A green velvet daybed offers a comfortable place to relax in the glass-topped conservatory.

Simon Brown

The cheerful bathroom is decorated with Blithfield’s Small Medallion wallpaper, majolica plates, and sprigs of chocolate cosmos.

Simon Brown

In the kitchen, dahlias in bud vases and black-and-white Staffordshire dogs are arranged in front of a landscape painting by Sarah Bowman.

Simon Brown

Brightly colored dahlias from Floriston Flower Farm complement the vivid hues in an Eardley Knollys painting.

Simon Brown

At her own home, the glories of the garden move indoors with arrangements of cut flowers that include seasonal delights like daffodils, tulips, roses, cosmos, and dahlias. The interiors are a comfortable combination of soft, brightly hued upholstered furniture arranged with art, heirlooms, and collected objects. (“I am not color averse,” she deadpans in an obvious understatement. “The more color the better. It brings me enormous pleasure.”) Texture, scale, and pattern are mixed and refined, creating a magical world inside and out.

A collection of vases by Richard Pomeroy from Thyme centers an eclectic tablescape ensemble with plates and placemats by Wicklewood and napkins by Villa Bologna.

Simon Brown

Garden-grown cosmos fill an antique lustreware mug on a vintage Colefax & Fowler tray. The wallpaper is Floral Trail by Salvesen Graham.

Simon Brown

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THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 13 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!

The post Butter Wakefield’s Painterly Garden Blooms With Inspiration appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

Read on to discover Bellomo’s tips and tricks for creating a shade garden, from choosing the right plants to finding the perfect pairings.

The post Anthony Bellomo Shares the Secrets to a Stunning Shade Garden appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

On weekends, Bellomo and his partner Christopher Spitzmiller would escape the hustle and bustle of Manhattan for their bucolic Clove Brook Farm in Millbrook, New York, where they tended to a garden of their own (as well as an abundance of award-winning livestock). When the pandemic began, the couple found themselves fleeing urban life entirely, moving full-time to their upstate sanctuary. With this transition, a unique opportunity to open a garden shop presented itself to Bellomo. “It allowed me to make this transition from working for a big company in the city to doing something on my own at a very different scale,” says Bellomo. Located in the heart of Millbrook, his shop, Orangerie, attracts visitors from near and far for its lush plants and mix of traditional and contemporary garden decor.

Orangerie Home + Garden owner Anthony Bellomo.Quentin Bacon

With warmer weather on the horizon, we called up Bellomo to chat about preparing for the spring season. “Just seeing that little glimmer of life emerge is always really exciting,” he says. “There’s nothing like spring green—I think it’s just the most wonderful part of the garden cycle.”

From flowering bulbs to planting perennials, read on to get his expert tips for your most bountiful, colorful garden yet.

• • •

Start planning your spring bulb garden in the fall.

“Plant bulbs that bloom in the early spring, like daffodils and tulips, in the fall, because they have to go through a dormant period in the winter. When the weather breaks, they wake up and start growing,” says Bellomo. “It takes a lot of planning ahead.”

Don’t worry about frozen ground.

“It doesn’t matter if the ground freezes, because essentially the bulbs are just sleeping away. They’re insulated by the soil and a blanket of snow here and there helps with that—they’re perfectly fine in the cold ground.”

Different bulbs need different depths.

“I think a general rule of thumb is that the depth of planting should usually be two to three times the diameter of the bulb. So for example, little teeny tiny bulbs, like snowdrops or grape hyacinths, would only be planted into the ground a couple of inches, while bigger bulbs like daffodils and tulips will go into the ground deeper, five or six inches or more depending on their size.”

A planting of Narcissus arranged in naturalistic drifts through the lawn by the pond.Courtesy of Anthony Bellomo

Think ahead to future flowerings.

“Certain bulbs, like daffodils, naturalize, meaning that the drift of initial bulbs will get thicker and more robust with more blooms every year. Tulips are the opposite, every year after the initial planting, they start to fade out. So by year two, you get less color, less blooms and then by year three, they’ve sort of fizzled. One of the things that we do here to ensure that our tulip display is always robust and beautiful is we only allow the tulip bulbs to be used once. We plant them in the fall, they bloom in the spring for a big block of color, and then all of that gets pulled out after they bloom and dispensed out in the compost heap. Come fall again, we do another big plant there of tulips. But there are plenty of bulbs out there that will come back year after year—the trick is knowing what the longevity will be.”

Watch out for these common risks.

“There are three things that can impact the health of a bulb. First, they don’t want to sit in wet soil. If you have a garden bed that is very wet and soggy, the bulbs will tend a rot—too much water is problematic. Second, it’s important to know whether or not they want full sun. Third, animals can sometimes pose a problem. If you’re in the country, like we are, squirrels and other animals might dig around and steal some of your bulbs.”

Composting is key for rich soil.

“As long as you have really good, healthy soil, you really don’t have to do much to prepare. We are fortunate here in that we have a big compost pile that breaks down, and we use a lot of that to amend the soil, to make sure that we’re putting nutrients back into the soil after it’s depleted—it enriches the soil again.”

You can plant spring flowers earlier than you think.

“The trick with spring plantings is that people think that you really have to wait until the last frost before planting things that flower for the summer. But the truth is, there are a lot of plants out there that are cold hardy, meaning they can take a nighttime frost. So you can have bright color as early as late March through April and into May, while there are still nighttime low temperatures and frost coverings.”

A spring garden can fit anywhere.

“I like to think about each season as having the potential to have a different planting scheme. That could be in the garden, it could be planters by a door, on a porch, or even in a small series of little pots on an apartment balcony or windowsills. So anybody can kind of do this at any scale!”

A high-yield garden doesn’t have to be high maintenance.

“There are ways to have a beautiful garden without it being a very high maintenance endeavor. With bulbs, once you get them in the ground, you don’t really have to do anything with them. And when forcing bulbs indoors, once they start growing they don’t require a lot of watering. Some bulbs can be placed in glass forcers which are like small vases made especially to hold a bulb.”

“Spring plants outside in the garden, like primrose, are easy to grow and are usually self- sufficient, as they bloom at a time of year with plenty of rainfall and cooler temperatures.”Courtesy of Anthony Bellomo

Consider seasonal changes in shade and sun.

“The thing to keep in mind is when early spring bulbs bloom, there really is not foliage out on the trees yet. So you don’t have to worry too much about dense shade, but there are bulbs (like snowdrops) that form carpets, especially around woodlands. Those would not be as happy in an open lawn where there’s full sun, whereas tulips would thrive in full sun.”

Keep an eye on moisture levels for potted plants.

“For anything in urns or planters, like on patios or balconies, they’re not going to get the same amount of rainfall or moisture that they would if they were in the ground, so make sure to monitor the water level.”

The post The Owner of Millbrook’s Buzziest Garden Shop Shares the Secrets to Planning a Spring Garden appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

Another view of the sunken garden with benches from the South of France and vintage dark green chairs that inspired O’Brien’s own outdoor collection for Century.Max Kim-Bee

An antique suzani serves as a tablecloth, atop which is a mix of 1920s Tiffany cobalt plates and 19th-century Japon blue-and-white faience by Creil et Montereau—the same pattern that Claude Monet used at Giverny, and which O’Brien has collected piece by piece; the roses are from the portico garden.Max Kim-Bee

The allée of locust trees between the garage and the Library House creates a glorious, airy canopy for a casual lunch. Cushions in Persian Lancers fabric by Schumacher.Max Kim-Bee

The post Take a Tour of Thomas O’Brien’s Lush Gardens on Long Island appeared first on Frederic Magazine.

Cinematography by Emmrich Creative.

The post Take a Stroll Around Shelley Johnstone’s Verdant Lake Forest Garden appeared first on Frederic Magazine.