Trade Secrets 2017: The Garden of Bunny Williams & John Rosselli

The garden of renowned interior designer, Bunny Williams, which she shares with her husband, antique dealer John Rosselli, is, not surprisingly, separated into rooms surrounding their handsome eighteenth century manor house, each contained by evergreen hedges, or walls, or a picturesque wooden fence. Boxwood, clipped into great balls marches along the front of the house beneath ancient, furrowed locust trees. A path from the driveway lures you down the side of the barn and the conservatory to a charming parterre garden, enclosed by a board fence. Here, in a pattern of box-edged beds, clipped standard Miss Kim lilacs are underplanted with annuals in a different color scheme each year. A pergola leads the visitor around the house, past yew hedges clipped into a swooping curtain framing hydrangeas, to the recently redesigned sunken garden where bold mixed borders and beds of perennials and annuals frame a long, narrow fish pond.

Above the house, an octagonal chicken house, barn, and greenhouse border the vegetable garden, where cutting flowers and vegetables are grown in a pleasing pattern of beds. Lettuces, spinach, and tulips in spring give way to tomatoes, cabbages, and dahlias in summer. Tables along the barn wall always sport a collection of potted plants, geraniums, perhaps, or succulents. A path leads up past an apple orchard in high grass to Bunny’s and John’s pool and pool house, a Greek Revival folly made of rustic wood and pine cones. From here, more paths lure you into the woodland, where the ground is carpeted with wildflowers and ferns. The woodland garden has recently been extended to lead to Bunny’s latest creation, her wonderful studio, which sits at the top of the hill, shaded by a Kentucky coffee tree and commanding a view of the village and distant Berkshire hills.

Click on images to enlarge.