Faye Toogood on creating a whimsical garden for her children to run wild in
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On a balmy afternoon, bookended by a breaking heatwave, I find myself having tea with the designer Faye Toogood in her wildflower meadow near Winchester. We are surrounded by cow parsley so tall that the world seems to disappear and, under a spot of bright blue sky, it feels as though we are in wonderland. Faye, who has recently been awarded an MBE in King Charles III’s 2026 Birthday Honours list for services to design and fashion, seems in a reflective mood.
‘I have a clear memory from when I was five – it’s about a tree in my parents’ garden that became my magical escape,’ she recalls. ‘It was my den – my safe place to go to as a child – and it let my imagination fly.’ Her childhood, which ‘continues to nurture my view of the world’, she says, was spent in nature, collecting shells and rocks, getting soil under her nails. It later became the springboard for a rich career spanning interiors, art and fashion.
Faye and her husband, Matt Gibberd, who is a writer and the co-founder of boutique estate agency The Modern House, have three children, and she wanted to instil a similar connection to nature in her brood. So, in 2017, the family moved from London to a garden flat near Faye’s parents in Winchester. ‘We quickly realised that we wanted to be either in the middle of everything – or in the middle of nowhere,’ she remembers. After searching in the area for two years, they heard through some friends about a Victorian farmhouse sitting on five and a half acres of land.
After searching in the area for two years, they heard through some friends about a Victorian farmhouse sitting on five and a half acres of land. ‘We were one of the first to see it and, of course, Matt, being the modernist he is, had found something that was made of concrete and my instinct was to want to immediately soften it.’
That viewing took place in 2020, so, in keeping with social distancing regulations, the owners had left all the doors and windows open, allowing the house to breathe. The first thing that Faye did was to walk through the front door and straight out to the back and into the garden: ‘I instantly knew the house had good bones, but the garden is my elixir and I wanted to understand how it made me feel.’
Once part of a family estate, the property had a previous life as a working farm, with horse paddocks at one end, a hornbeam hedge at the other and a tree-lined avenue in the middle, but not much else. ‘The house didn’t feel connected to the land – it looked as though it was floating above it,’ says Faye. But she could see the potential and, after removing the paddocks, she invited the acclaimed wildflower specialist Charles Flower to come and plant three acres of meadow that would have the effect of bringing the landscape closer to the house.
‘The soil type affects the species that you can grow and, as the site is close to a river, we sowed a seed mix that would be suitable for chalky soil,’ explains Charles. ‘There were approximately
20 wildflower species in the original seed mix that provide nectar and habitat for insects and butterflies.’ Dotted within swathes of wispy ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) are bright red field poppies (Papaver rhoeas), lilac field scabious (Knautia arvensis) and purple lesser knapweed (Centaurea nigra), which provide splashes of colour, drawing the eye towards the house from
wherever you happen to be on the land. Steel-blue globe thistles (Echinops ‘Taplow Blue’), scattered among swaying cow parsley and Musk mallow (Malva moschata), feather the horizon.
‘The reward was instant,’ recalls Faye. ‘When we first moved here, I could barely hear birds or insects, and now I wake up to birdsong and our kids spend hours running after butterflies.’ At the edge of the meadow, in a shed that has been converted into an art studio for the children, they can sketch their observations of the landscape and, like little Faye, store their collections of rocks, shells and all manner of things found on the land. ‘This is their haven, a strictly no-parents zone,’ she says, ‘but I have my potting shed by the kitchen garden that Kitten Grayson helped design, so we all have our happy place,’ she observes.
On a mission to remove as much lawn as she could from the site, Faye invited her friends and long-time collaborators, the Rich Landscapes founders and brothers Harry and David (of the BBC TV show Garden Rescue), to reimagine the courtyard garden, which is outside the kitchen-dining room.
Instead of providing her with a technical drawing or 3D visuals, David chose to paint a watercolour to illustrate the colours and textures they wanted to deliver. ‘The existing layout provided a strong but static framework,’ he recalls. ‘We then introduced four large borders planted in an informal and naturalistic style to offset the formal structure.’
The beds themselves are simple in their arrangement, but the planting is full of seasonality and nuance. Classics such as Rosa ‘Wildeve’ and ‘Lichfield Angel’, a nod to traditional cottage gardens, are scattered among looser forms of grass, such as Melica ciliata and Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, and perennials such as Scabiosa ochroleuca, Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus and Deschampsia cespitosa.
‘Nearer the house, inspired by Faye’s love of rounded shapes, we introduced organic forms of yew hedging around the long table,’ says David. ‘The gravel planting surrounding these hedges made the space even less formal, allowing the eye to wander and the plants to self-seed in the areas less trodden.’
For someone who has been nurtured by nature – Faye Toogood’s mother was a florist and as a family they loved growing vegetables – watching her children run through the meadow, free as they can be, fills her heart with joy. ‘I thank the garden for that every day,’ she says. ‘I know so many children don’t have that and I am very aware that they are so lucky’. fayetoogood.com | @t_o_o_g_o_o_d
Martin Morrell1/9Alliums, achillea, roses and sweet peas fill the bed outside the potting shed
Martin Morrell2/9Rosa ‘Dannahue’ by David Austin Roses
Martin Morrell3/9The garden is a wonderful playground for the couple’s children and includes features such as this swing, which hangs from a mature oak tree
Martin Morrell4/9Views out to the meadow garden where pollinator-friendly planting devised by Charles Flowers has replaced the old horse paddock
Martin Morrell5/9Digitalis lutea
Martin Morrell6/9Cottage-inspired planting beds by the Rich brothers
Martin Morrell7/9The drumstick heads of Allium sphaerocephalon
Martin Morrell8/9The children’s art studio with a fungi poster from Ebay, the boat was a gift from Matt’s father, and a table by Malgorzata Bany complements Faye’s ‘Roly Poly’ side table
Martin Morrell9/9A pair of ‘Peace’ outdoor chairs designed by Faye on the lawn overlooking the meadow
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