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Luxury garden swing seats and other oddities
We were thrilled when Sean Pritchard agreed to have us out to Somerset to end our summer’s journal. Reading his book, you can’t help but develop a fondness for him, and his devotion to bringing the outside in perfectly mirrors our own to bringing the inside out.
So committed is he to his plants that he’s given up all space to house a rocker, so he suggests we spend the afternoon in one of his village’s apple orchards. It’s set in an old medieval strip field, stretching a bumpy furlong up a hill that gives increasingly beautiful views of the Mendip Hills.
One of a dwindling number of orchards in a region with a centuries-old history of cider-making, it is lovingly tended by Sue who harvests the apples and makes her own (delicious) juices and ciders. Cider apples such as Dabinetts and Stoke Reds grow up one side opposite the cookers and eaters, among them Morgan Sweets, Somerset Red Streaks and Devonshire Quarrendens.
Before the day is over, Sean invites us for a bite at his picture-perfect cottage nestled into the village’s hillside. Flowers greet us in a beautiful chaos - a wonderful contrast to the immaculate cottage and the organised orchard it overlooks. It’s a calm and meditative place that feels properly rural and sort of trapped in time. A place that quiets the mind, as well as delighting his many admirers on instagram.
It has struck me doing this journal that people who appreciate the outdoors are generally the very best of people: thoughtful, intelligent and feeling. Sean is all of these as well as humble and it's been a real treat to read his musings on our favourite subjects. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
When did you know it was a gardeners life for you?
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For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by design where the objective is to display. As a child I absorbed all the ways in which museums would present objects and artifacts to its visitors and the ways shop windows would sell their products. I obsessively bought fashion and design magazines growing up and was most captivated by the editorial features that displayed clothes, interiors and outdoor spaces in interesting and unexpected ways. At the same time, as a young boy I was developing an interest in plants and the natural world – fuelled mostly by my grandparent’s garden and, specifically, my grandfather’s hobby of growing sweet peas every summer. What I came to understand was that these two interests weren’t mutually exclusive but in fact one and the same: the garden really was just another way to display something. However, instead of displaying inanimate objects, what is thrilling about the garden is that the display comes from living and unpredictable subjects: plants. I find the idea of trying to orchestrate a beautiful garden display from something that ultimately you have very little control over fascinating; plants can behave erratically and, for me, the magic comes in the way the garden achieves its own idiosyncratic display.
Tell us about your cottage and its situation in the Mendip Hills… what brought you there?
The cottage was built as a labourer’s dwelling in the 17th century as part of the farm that sits behind it. Originally, the cottage was just two rooms: one room downstairs where cattle would take shelter in poor weather and a room above that for the labourer. Over the past 300 years it has been extended a couple of times and has taken on different roles within the village – at one point the cottage was the local dairy.
The Mendip Hills is an ancient and fascinating place. Down the road there’s the dramatic Cheddar Gorge and the whole landscape surrounding the cottage is dotted with mysterious cave systems that have been the subject of exploration for thousands of years.
I had lived in London for many years, but my partner, Dan, had family in Somerset so we would visit the area regularly. Eventually, a real love for this part of the West Country developed and we looked for a modest cottage that we could escape to from London. What I really like about the Mendip Hills is that it still feels very authentic. It’s still very much a working rural community.
Does country life sit comfortably with you?
The sense of being close to the natural world and being a tiny part of an ancient landscape is something that brings a great deal of inspiration, and relaxation, to me. There’s something very pure and fulfilling in the stillness and the predictable rhythm of life in the country that I find very comforting.
But there’s always a part of me that still gets a certain amount of energy from the chaos and messiness of London. I don’t think I could ever leave it completely.
Your community has a strong sense of its history. Tell us a bit about the local orchards and traditions…
Orchards have been an essential part of the Somerset landscape for hundreds of years. This is cider country and orchards throughout history have shaped the customs and way of life in the region. Orchards were ubiquitous all over Somerset, but sadly only a fraction of them now remain. Thankfully, our village has retained a handful, but many, including one that used to belong to our cottage, have been lost to development over the years.
There’s been a renewed sense of interest in the orchard habitat in this part of Somerset in recent years which is pleasing to see. However, with space now at such a premium, it’s hard to convince would-be landowners to give over all, or even part, of what they own to orchard restoration.
In our village we keep the local tradition of wassailing the apple trees alive every January. This is the midwinter custom of blessing the apple trees so that they might produce a bountiful crop in the coming growing season. It involves singing to the trees and dancing round them. Cider made from the previous year’s harvest is poured at its base and a gunshot is fired to ward off any evil spirits that may be looking to sabotage the trees as they wake up from their winter sleep. Nowadays it’s a fun winter festival but at its heart lies a very unique and historic identity that continues to define the area.
Your garden is a tiny paradise. What did you inherit and what did you change?
The cottage garden is small and sits in a sheltered position between two merging country lanes. The garden all sits out to the front of the cottage, and it’s basically just packed with all my favourite plants and flowers.
Originally the garden was mostly lawn with a few shrubs dotted around the outside. It was pleasant enough, but I knew I needed more space to grow so I removed the lawn and created planting beds in its place. A ditch runs down one side making that half of the garden quite boggy. It’s a challenging spot but I quite like the different textural opportunities that it presents.
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What is it you most like to grow?
I’m obsessed with colour in the garden. I find the old gardens that you read about in Gertrude Jekyll books so fascinating; those cottagers that filled their spaces with layer upon layer of colour and texture. There’s something so honest and unpretentious about them. I’m always looking to create a sense of that in the garden at the cottage. I love all the old-fashioned annuals that have sadly faded out of fashion. Things like nasturtiums, calendula and antirrhinums. They bring a certain energy and optimism to the summer garden that I always find so thrilling.
We love the concept of Outside In. Why do you think it’s so important to be surrounded by nature?
To me it’s essential that I’m always surrounded by the natural world inside the cottage. Plants and flowers add something to a room that nothing else can replicate – they bring a sense of dynamism and unpredictability that I find really thrilling. I like to see the house as really a continuation of the garden with any sense of boundary between the two removed. The cottage belongs to its landscape. It’s grown from the land that surrounds it and so it feels only natural that the magical shapes, textures and colours of the plants that this soil produces should be allowed to encroach on the interior spaces.
Bringing the garden inside also gives me a calming sense of continuity too. The rhythm of the year sees the same plants come and go time and time again. It’s an antidote to the chaos and unpredictability of life that roots me in the here and now and reminds me to enjoy what is happening in that moment.
I think people tend to assume that you need a huge garden filled with endless flowers to successfully create an ongoing display of the garden indoors. But that’s really not the case. There’s always something in the landscape, however small, that can be brought inside as a reminder of the magic to be found in the natural world.
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A couple of times in your book you mention having a busy mind… do you see gardening as remedial?
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I do. Of course the physical side of gardening is great for switching off and focussing on one task, but more and more I find that the planning of the garden is the most mentally soothing aspect. The forward thinking of potential container displays and planting combinations, the trawling through seed and bulb catalogues, the discovery of an interesting new plant: these are all things that I find help to bring focus and quiet to a restless mind as the excitement and anticipation of a new season approaches.
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Is there a particular time of year that you enjoy most or where your garden appears its best?
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The end of May and early June is hard to beat for me. There’s so much opportunity and optimism at that time. Everything is exploding in the garden and the landscape is flush with fresh greens. Foxgloves, roses, irises: there’s a bounty of garden flowers. The birds are at their most vociferous and everywhere seems to just be an explosion of life. The nights seem to last forever. It’s the time I most look forward to during the winter and the time I always wonder if I’ve made the most of once it passes.
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What makes a perfect summer’s day for you?
A day in summer with nothing to focus on other than those things that feed your soul is what I would consider pretty perfect.
A long breakfast out in the garden, perhaps followed by some reading and light gardening. All the doors and windows of the cottage flung wide open, selecting a few flowers to display in different rooms, the sound of birds and bees and grasshoppers everywhere. A simple lunch and a walk through the fields that cascade down the hills. In the evening, a table outside decorated with a big jug of garden flowers and a supper that stretches long into the night.
The sort of day where, at the end, nothing has really happened, except you feel a quiet inner peace and contentment that you’ve made the most of a summer’s day in the most personal way possible.
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You observe in your book that it’s a very natural human instinct to gather and display items. What is it for you that you enjoy so much?
I think we all have a compulsion to display the things that are most personal to us. We decorate the places we live with objects that tell a story about who we are and what we display becomes a little window into the inner workings of our minds. We’re visual animals; we respond to things that spark something in our imagination. It makes sense, therefore, that we’d want to fill our most private spaces with the things that inspire us. It’s the sense that the display of objects is, for the most part, purely decorative that really fascinates me. That need we have to make sense of the chaos in life by surrounding ourselves with the things we hold dear.
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Do you have any brief advice on cutting and displaying for anyone who hasn’t read your book?
If you can help it, always cut flowers from the garden at the extremes of the day – either early morning or late evening. During the day plants are losing lots of water through transpiration so they don’t stand as good a chance of surviving when cut. When you cut, place the stems in lukewarm water immediately and leave for a good hour or two to let them acclimatise.
When displaying garden flowers there are no rules. I think people often get too hung up on whether what they create looks good enough or whether they’ve put the right colours together. I’m always more concerned with creating a display that echoes what’s going on in the garden, so I’m happy for the flowers to be a riot of colours and for everything to fall naturally as it would outside. Go with what makes you happy.​
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What does the autumn and winter hold for you? What are you looking forward to?
This year has been challenging for me in the garden. Aside from our erratic weather, I’ve spent more time than usual away from it at the crucial points of the season when things need to be addressed. That’s meant that I’m not overly happy with where the garden currently is right now at the end of summer. Most of my dahlias have been eaten as I just haven’t been around to constantly check on them! I’m looking forward to spending time over autumn and winter looking back at what I could have done differently and making plans for next season. As ever, there’ll be a lot of bulbs to plant.
There are some very exciting work projects happening over the coming months which I’m looking forward to getting stuck into. Autumn still always feels very back-to-school for me, so I’m excited to settle down and crack on.
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Lastly, what is it about the rocker that feels special to you?
It was such a thrill to spend time with the rocker in the orchard. Colour is so important to me and defines pretty much everything I do, so it was a complete thrill to see the rocker looking so vibrant.
Emma’s tangerine design is, I think, the perfect colour. An earthy, husky orange, it shone amongst the deepening greens of the apple trees on the cusp of autumn. It’s a seductive colour; to me, it reminds me of lazy summer afternoons spent with a book and the promise of a warm evening spent with supper outside. Tassels, finials, a fabric ceiling… what’s not to love!
Sean is pictured on Baracca Tangerine by Emma Grant for ODD.
His tablecloth is in Atlas Stripe Madder & Indigo by Emma Grant for ODD.​
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Photography by Maximilian Kindersley.