The place

Originally two Grade II listed 17th century cottages on the site of a 13th century hill farm, they were made into one home by Priscilla Carluccio, sister of Terence Conran, and Creative Director of the Conran Design Group when she met Dan. Her husband was the Italian chef, Antonio Carluccio.

The brief

Priscilla commissioned Dan to create a romantic and natural rural setting in keeping with the mood of this idyllic thatched cottage, inspired by productive medieval gardens.

The design

The expansive yard in front of the property was turned into an abundant gravel garden, featuring massed tree lupins growing with wild roses and ox-eye daisies. A narrow border immediately in front of the cottage provided an intensively gardened space where Priscilla was able to play with her love for colour and grow flowers for cutting. A traditional potager garden created in the field above the house, was where Antonio grew a wide range of traditional and unusual fruit and vegetable varieties, used in meals that in summer were served on long trestle tables under the apple trees in the orchard behind the house.

Designer Priscilla Carluccio and her husband Antonio, who owns the Neal Street Restaurant and Carluccio’s delicatessen, had a contemporary vision for a garden which would be totally in keeping with their 13th-century Hampshire hill farm. The garden was to be a place of escape. A retreat from plastic, pollution and people. A conscious return to the early English gardens, where the beds are edged with un­treated oak boards and old sacking is used for tree ties; a place where beauty and practi­cality grow hand in hand. Priscilla wanted it to be a contemporary equivalent of the earliest medieval gardens whose colours were pre­dominantly soft whispery greens, muted and pale. 

Rosie Atkins | Elle Decoration