East London’s Spitalfields is a patchwork of buildings, centered on the Georgian gem of Fournier Street. Originally constructed for Huguenot silk weavers and merchants, these magnificent structures were gradually divided into affordable housing and workshops that are now inhabited by a few artists and more recent immigrants. Then, when many of them were about to fall apart, the homes were slowly found again by individuals who have both the financial means and the artistic sense to save them.
Back in 2013, Ben Adler and his late wife Pat Llewellyn fell in love with one of the best homes on the block. A project was obviously enjoyable for the pair. They hired Julian Harrap Architects to carefully reverse the structural deterioration of their Spitalfields property, which had previously been occupied with modest rag-trade workshops and was most recently used as an office and sample store for a fabric wholesaler. Just 11 months before Pat passed away, the couple was able to move in after laborious, almost three-year-long construction.
Their home was now a success, but the walled garden behind it was still a mess, ruined by a nine-car garage that had been abandoned for decades. The garage held the previous owner’s collection of sports cars and took up almost the whole garden, including the area where the potager currently stands. Ben and Pat then looked to Miria Harris for assistance. This was the young landscape designer’s first major solo assignment. She was the sister of an old friend and had worked for ten years as a public art curator before spending four years at Jinny Blom’s firm. When Miria first saw the mansion on Christmas Eve of 2016, she realized she was being called to design an immediate masterpiece of great significance. She remarks, “It was a beautiful expression of trust.”
“I drew up a framework of intersecting paths converging on a circular raised bed at the heart of the ornamental garden, which referenced Georgian designs and ultimately would lead through a gate in a wall to be created towards the back of the garden and into a small potager,” Miria proposed. Ben and Pat wanted a timeless, romantic garden that could be filled with flowers in time for the upcoming summer. We knew the kitchen garden would have to wait, but Ben and Pat already owned the gate—it had originally belonged to poet Dylan Thomas, which attracted Pat, a Welshwoman.
When Miria found some ancient and extremely lovely espaliered pears, she utilized the hoarding boards, which were temporarily black, that separated the garden at the location where the potager wall would eventually be created. “They were so wonderfully gnarled, it seemed like the garden had always been here,” the author adds.
She installed raised beds to soften the appearance of the high boundary walls, created pathways out of Vande Moortel Belgian brick, which is a modern material with an ageless charm, and added a number of old embellishments, such as a stone font dating back to the fourteenth century. As far as Miria is concerned, it’s an homage to Christ Church Spitalfields, the Hawksmoor church visible over the garden wall. “I positioned the outdoor table with the church in mind as well, so Ben and Pat could sit and watch the sun set behind its spire.”
Miria then created a planting schedule designed to have flowers in the garden for as long as feasible. We began with amazing striped tulips and then had a peony and wisteria eruption. However, I believe the flowers are what really sets it apart. Rosa “Boscobel” is often the first and last to blossom, although there are many others, such as “Little White Pet,” “Gertrude Jekyll,” “American Pillar,” and “Cardinal de Richelieu.” They are selected based on their scent and color, which varies from light pink and white to the darkest burgundy.
It’s amazing that the project was finished in less than two months, and the result is a heartfelt summer filled with aroma and flowers. The garden has now stabilized, and two years ago Ben gave Miria a call once more to finally carry out her potager ideas. She constructed a wrought-iron pergola to resemble Dylan’s gate, commissioned raised vegetable beds with turned wooden corners that mimic the form of an interior 1726 newel post, and chose additional espaliered fruit trees to border the walls made of lime mortar and used bricks.
The garden now securely rests within both the ancient and modern walls. It is the picture of romance, partly because of its delicate planting and design, but mostly because it was made for two lovers, of whom only the ghost of one remains.