Cordelia de Castellane, tastemaker and artistic director of Dior Home, has grown a gorgeous French country garden at her weekend home. Carefully designed with a blend of beauty, nature, and endless flowers in mind, her inspiring garden has many gorgeous lessons to takeaway. Let’s take a moment to look at her garden through the eyes of an artist, gathering inspiration and garden design ideas from this beautiful space and her impeccable taste.
Table of Contents
1. Start with the Feeling
When Cordelia de Castellane found her French country garden and home, she wanted to keep the feeling of the garden natural and untouched. This gave her a guideline to inform all garden design ideas and decisions, from plants to borders to color palettes. If it felt too forced, formal, or fussy, it didn’t have a place in the environment she wanted to create and maintain.
2. Get to Know Your Garden
Before purchasing her French country estate, Cordelia tended the garden for the previous owners on weekends. This allowed her to get to know the environment over time and with the changing seasons. Her first step in allowing garden design ideas to percolate was to learn as much as she could. She started by making the borders larger and planting a kitchen garden, both projects she felt comfortable undertaking.
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Blend Garden Styles
Once she decided to move forward with a bigger garden design project, Cordelia chose to work with London-based landscape designer Milan Hajsinek. She had a unique garden design idea, due to her love of both English cottage garden and French country garden design styles. Milan was able to help her blend them harmoniously, giving her the best of both worlds.
“My French-style garden is at the front, but my heart was set on an English flower garden at the back.”
-Cordelia de Castellane
4. Make Your Greenhouse a Moment
A greenhouse was an essential element of Cordelia de Castellane’s inspiring garden, and doubles as a seed starting, potting, flower arranging, and outdoor dining space. Rather than placing it in a corner, the greenhouse is front and center and draws in the eye from every angle of the garden.
5. Choose Your Signature Garden Colors
The greenhouse also established one of the artistic garden’s signature colors, a pale turquoise, a shade lighter than Tiffany blue. This was meaningful for Cordelia, as it was the color of her former brand. In the garden design it gives both the greenhouse and the garden a bespoke, sophisticated, and cheerful feeling.
6. Design Your Garden for Daily Life
The creation of living spaces – chaise lounges, dining tables, and benches to spend quality time in Cordelia’s French country garden is not overlooked. Each living space has been carefully chosen for the beautiful view and function of the space. The furniture matches the casual French country meets English cottage garden aesthetic in white and blue checkers and stripes.
7. Grow Your Own Inspiration
As the creative director of Dior Maison and Baby Dior, flowers are a central source of inspiration for Cordelia de Castellane’s designs. It was only natural for her to want a garden full of flowers for cutting and her own space for flower arranging. They transformed the classic French pigeonnier by the entranceway into her flower arranging, drying, and seed saving room.
9. Add Flowers to Your Tablescape
Cordelia loves to entertain almost as much as she loves to garden. After all, she has written a book about it. She uses her flowers to create exquisite tablescapes for outdoor dining. She adds personal touches by adding her own tableware and linen designs.
9. Baskets for Cutting and Collecting
Don’t forget to keep your garden basket collection close to the door so they’re ready to grab and collect fresh flowers, fruits and veggies, flowering branches, and other beautiful bits to bring the outside in.
10. Love What You Grow
Cordelia has recently transformed a meadow into a cutting garden, to give her an endless supply of flowers to arrange and enjoy. She particularly loves to grow tulips, dahlias, cosmos, delphiniums, peonies, David Austin roses, and other cottage garden staples. So, grow the flowers that inspire you, that smell divine, that you want to spend time with.
Et voila, I hope you enjoyed these ten garden design ideas that will help you create the garden of your dreams. For more French country garden inspiration, take a look inside the stunning studio and château of this French artist and flower painter.
10 Garden Design Ideas from Cordelia de Castellane’s French Country Garden
