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Luxury garden swing seats and other oddities
Willow Crossley
It was a bright white morning in March when Willow invited us to visit, as the first of this year’s guests on the ODD Journal. In spite of the sunny weather, it was a few days short of the spring equinox, and her garden in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds had one foot still firmly planted in winter.
It was still a heavenly scene: light dancing through leafless trees onto swathes of hellebores and Leucojums nodding demurely against mossy walls; church bells and schoolchildren heard in the background. The garden had a stillness, like a held breath, so different to the sense of movement everywhere come April.
Willow greeted us in her sock feet, delivering warm teas and showing us around. We enter via her studio, a repurposed portico that also serves as a covered walkway to the garden. It’s a wonderful experience: the light is softer here and the air is scented. Vases of all descriptions cover the surfaces, except her worktop, which has a scattering of small, colourful arrangements left out. The opposite side is lined with floristry buckets, packed with flowers awaiting their turn.
The rest of the garden is a reflection of a full family life. An assortment of outbuildings have been assigned various roles and there is an entire lawn devoted to a football pitch. The house has the roofscape of a small city, endless slants and angles, tiled long ago and suggestive of the many nooks inside.
To the back of the house is a more formal cutting garden with twin yews and raised beds divided by paved paths and neat hedging. Willow’s rocker sits here, under a tree pink with blossom, overlooked by the geranium-filled conservatory that we snuck into for a few pictures… and to warm up!
Your garden is brimming with life in early spring while most are in a winter slumber. Do you enjoy this time of year in the garden?
I absolutely adore this time of year in the garden. I makes me feel so hopeful and excited. All the little shoots slowly emerging, my first tulip has actually just flowered which felt so thrilling! I especially look forward to the tulips and then the dahlias that follow a few months later. And the sweetpeas in the middle!
How has your garden evolved in the 14 years you've been here?
We haven’t done a huge amount structurally to the garden since we arrived here. We put in better raised beds in the cutting garden last year which has made a big difference. I have two beds for flowers, and Charlie has two beds for vegetables. We are quite competitive about who’s having which area!
What do you grow in the cut flower and vegetable beds?
I sow a lot of seeds into mine as this is where I pick from to arrange with, so lots of Ammi, corncockle, nasturtiums, phlox. I recently planted a stripey rose, called Ferdinand Pichard , which I hope will be a little more prolific this year than last!
How do you and your family like to use the garden?
It’s basically used as a giant sports field. We have three sons, so it rotates between being a cricket, football, hockey and rugby pitch depending what month we are in. Which is pretty disastrous for all my flowers - they show absolutely zero respect for any of them! The area we mostly hang out is the cutting garden area. There is an old well in the middle of it which Charlie has turned into a barbecue. The sun sets there so we spend a lot of time hanging out there in the afternoon when it’s warm. This is where the rocker is too, so I’m planning on spending most of the summer here.
It seems a very natural entertaining space. Do you have time for parties or family gatherings in the garden?
We haven’t really recently. We have been travelling quite a bit so when we are at home, we're quite happy pottering, just us, but I want to do more this year.
You have the most wonderful collection of outbuildings, with your magical studio topping them all. Please tell us how it came into being...
It feels way too fancy to call my studio a studio, it's basically just a walkway into the house but it’s become that over time. There are no doors on it - it’s very open plan and relaxed. Charlie built my worktop out of some scaffolding planks and there's space to store all my buckets, so it works really well. It’s not ideal when it’s really cold as my flowers all freeze, but it stays lovely and cool in the summer.
How did you fall into floristry? Are there any events you still dream of doing?
I did a floristry course about 10 years ago, which made me realise that working with flowers was something that I could do professionally. I have always loved being outside and working with nature, I feel very lucky to call it my work. Job wise, I love creating big installations. Maybe a runway for Gucci?! Or a Taylor Swift stage? She had a little cabin made out of moss at her ERAs tour which got me very overexcited!
Your vase collection had us turning green with envy. We'd love to know more about it...
I am a complete vase hoarder; I can’t help it! I collect all different shapes and sizes and pretend it’s research! I do think that there are very few good vases out there; there are lots that look pretty, but functionally and proportionately don’t work. That's why I started designing them in the first place.
You were one of ODD’s early customers! What made you decide you had to have a rocker?
The founders are great family friends of ours so I’d grown up loving them. I seem to remember Charlie promising we could get one if and when we moved to the country. I think I basically agreed to move to the country just for the rocker! We had it before the little two were born, so we have many very happy memories trying to rock them to sleep in the sun on it.
It’s been transformed now into one of our new designs by Emma Grant for ODD. What drew you to Vaas?
I absolutely adore the design. Our one before this was plain cream which was beautiful and very calming, but I am very drawn to pattern and colour and feel perhaps this one could be a little bit more practical too?! I am so impractical, I can’t believe I just said that!
We’d love to hear a bit about your upbringing in Wales, and how it’s influenced you? Do you still spend much time there?
I wish I could spend more time there. We go every school holiday at least, but life is so busy with work and the boys' sports at the weekend that it makes it quite hard. My upbringing there was completely idyllic. We spent every second outside, playing in the woods, hanging out in the river, skimming stones and eating picnics.
Your mother’s wonderful art is inspired by the Welsh landscape and often features beautiful floral arrangements. How has her work and creativity inspired you throughout your life?
She constantly inspires me. There is literally nothing she can’t do! Be it her painting, her writing, her gardening…I adore her paintings and am her number one biggest fan - our house looks like a Kate Corbett Winder exhibition!
Between the school runs, floristry, your product designs, The Seedling and design collaborations, you always have a lot of balls in the air. What do you do to relax?
I fantasise about relaxing, but in reality, I am very bad at it! I like being busy and having lots of creative balls in the air makes me very happy. But at the same time, I am learning that it is very important to be able to switch off and not burn myself out.
If you could take your rocker anywhere in the world, where would you most like to be swinging on it?
The Maldives please. Right on the beach, surrounded by shells and baby sharks swimming around.
