8 questions with selina lake about book 8

Spring is such a fickle season. One day it's cold, the next day it's not; the shovels are still accessible but so are the rakes. It's always during this chilly-bright season that I start thinking about making the yard pretty so the timing of Selina Lake's new book Garden Style couldn't be better. Inspired scenes, photographed to perfection by Rachel Whiting, are already filling my head with all kinds of plans! I'm a longtime admirer of Selina's work and can spot her editorial styling in an instant on the covers of magazines like Country Living UK and Country Homes & Interiors. When I visited London Selina and I met for tea, and she later penned the foreword to my second book Seaside Tinkered Treasures. She's a hero, and a friend.

This is Selina's eighth book so rather than the typical review, I thought it would be fun to ask her eight questions about book eight. Here we go!

1. What was your favorite flower as a child?
I loved roses and still do. My sister Aimee and I used to make our own ‘perfume’ with the roses petals we picked from our mum's roses bushes in the garden. (We mixed rose petals and water and decanted into glass bottles).

2. Favorite flower at this moment:
Right now it's blossom flowers. The trees here in the UK are blossoming -- it's been a late start to spring due to the weather this year but slowly the flowers are emerging. We have a white magnolia and a plum tree in our garden which both have beautiful flowers and I can see them from my office window. They won’t last long but while they do, I will enjoy them.

3. Favorite object to use as a vase:
I like to recycle glass bottles and jars and make displays with lots of them grouped together holding single stems of flowers and greenery.

4. Favorite flower combination for a spring bouquet in a vase:

I’m growing a few of my favourite spring bulbs in my garden at the moment and when they bloom I intend to harvest a few for a bouquet to display on our mantlepiece. These include ivory white thalia and scented sweet smiles narcissus with danceline tulips. I will mix them with  a few branches of tree blossoms.

5. Pick one pot and why: terra cotta or galvanized metal?
Galvanised metal every time. I love using old buckets as planters and in my book I share an idea for stencilling fleurs on them. {See above, Garden Style, page 54}

6. Favorite piece of gardening gear:
Definitely gardening gloves. I used to buy pretty ones but after all the weeding we did in our garden when we bought our house, I now use only heavy-duty gloves to protect my hands from thorns and stinging nettles.

7. Your go-to gardening tool:
I like tools with wooden handles and buy second-hand ones at vintage fairs and boot sales. I like to use spades and forks as decoration in the middle of our borders. {See above, Garden Style, page 61}

8. Favorite shade of green:
Oooh, tough one! I love green … I just painted a feature wall in our bedroom a really dark almost black green but I also love the pastel shade of green the shed on my book's cover is painted!
~*~

Thank you to Selina for contributing to this blog post and to Ryland Peters and Small for my review copy of Selina Lake: Garden Style: Inspirational Styling for your Outside Space. Well, I'm off to round-up some tin pots and wood crates, and tape some botanical prints to my shed window!

Thanks for reading!

xo
elyse