Butter Wakefield: The UK Garden Designer Redefining Color and Whimsy

If you love gardens that feel as though they have a soul, layered, generous, full of color and life, then Butter Wakefield is your girl. An American-born, London-based garden designer with over 15 years of experience, Butter has built a quietly extraordinary career creating some of the most beautiful small urban gardens in Britain. She holds an RHS Gold Medal, a place on House & Garden’s coveted Top 50 Garden Designers list, and most recently took home the Grand Award at the 2025 Bali National Landscape Awards. And yet, when you talk to her, she will tell you she still considers herself a novice in many respects.

Butter has a deeply personal commitment to the natural world from pollinators, to seasonality, to the idea that even the smallest London plot deserves beauty in every nook and cranny. I am so honored that Butter allowed us to chat with her about her path into garden design, her philosophy of color, and what she never leaves home without. I think you’re going to love her!

You are well-known for your beautifully layered garden designs. Tell us a bit about your upbringing and how that influenced your love of the outdoors and cultivating beautiful surrounding spaces and gardens. 

I grew up on the East Coast of America, on a little farm outside of Baltimore, Maryland. My love for dogs, ponies and all things outdoors taught me at an early age the responsibility and hard work that accompanies these pleasures. My mother, aunt and grandfather were all keen and accomplished gardeners, and I remember with great fondness wandering around their beautiful gardens as a child – my deep appreciation of beautiful surroundings and passion for gardening is a family inheritance running deep in my veins.

You’ve earned an RHS Gold Medal and been named one of House & Garden’s Top 50 Garden Designers. When you look back at that journey, what moment made you think this is really happening for me?

Gosh, how funny that you ask this as I still think I am a real novice in many respects, but very recently we did win the Bali National Landscape Awards 2025 Principal for Hawthorn House – Domestic Garden Construction – Over £750K and the overall Grand Award for the same project which really felt like a huge great big deal. This was our first big project in the country which in and of itself was so happy making and quite surprisingly our efforts were so richly rewarded. It did help to work with exceptional landscape contractors The Outdoor Room and a truly forward thinking, wonderful client. The project has just been published in the March issue of Gardens Illustrated which is also hugely exciting!

You were born in Maryland but built your career in the heart of British garden design with Butter Wakefield Garden Design. How did an American girl fall so completely in love with the English garden tradition, and what does that outsider-insider perspective give you that others might not have?

Upbringing, education, and training have all contributed to the formation of Butter Wakefield Garden Design, a small design studio, offering a very unique and personal service, backed by over 15 years of experience creating many inspirational and purposeful gardens of all sizes both in London and beyond. I truly have a profound love for my job, the girls in my studio, and my clients and I dedicate a tremendous amount of time and care over them all.

The Chelsea Flower Show is basically the Super Bowl of the garden world. Can you walk us through what it actually feels like to show there, and how that experience has shaped your design philosophy? 

I have never designed a garden at the CFS, I have designed an award-winning Trade Stand there, but it is a very different thing, I think. That aside, the atmosphere is like nothing else, it always feels like you are in the midst of something exceptionally special with the very best of our industry’s greatest designers, nurserymen, and contractors, all in one place at the same time. I am forever learning, and the CFS is one of the best resources for plants and design ideas going. It is a joy and always a thrill to be there soaking up the very best of the best. 

Your London gardens are known for being incredibly colorful and layered. Where does that commitment to color and abundance come from, and do you bring that same sensibility to your personal style?

For me, my commitment to colour is really all about my commitment to the natural world and the insects. We try to support them in the most efficient and thorough manner we possibly can. Our commitment to flower choice and colour is almost secondary to the amount of pollen and nectar each flower produces, and how attractive each flower is to the bees and butterflies. Colour of course is crucial to the overall story of the planting, but without the pollen and nectar, the flowers, no matter their hue, might often get passed over for one that offers both. 

Most of our work is in small London gardens and as such every inch is terribly important so we have to design our garden with lots of lovely layers starting with the boundaries and trees, working our way into garden to the plugs and fillers we put in the paving joints. My personal style I guess might also be somewhat of a layered affair and a very colourful look. I am not afraid to wear bold colours, in fact some of my favourite dungarees are bright orange/red. Also, I am perpetually cold so inevitably I wear a tweed waistcoat over a jumper, followed by scarfs to keep my neck warm. I always wear a scarf right up until almost mid-May.

You studied at both the English Gardening School and the London College of Garden Design, and you have a background in interior design with Colefax and Fowler. How does the interior designer’s eye influence the way you approach an outdoor space?

I trained at the English Gardening School (1997/98) completing the Year Diploma Course in Plants and Plantsmanship, winning two prizes. More recently I graduated from The London College of Garden Design (2013/14) with a Merit Commended. 

Originally, when I worked as an interior design assistant at Colefax and Fowler on Brook Street (where I was trained in the world of decorative interiors), it was there that my love of the creative process took hold as I learned about scale, texture, pattern, colour and the principles and practices of design.

When I think of British garden design I think of the friction between a neatly clipped hedge and a riot of tumbling roses. As someone who has worked within that tradition for decades, how has it influenced the way you think about your own personal aesthetic?

So many of the same principles apply to designing space whether it is outside or in. It’s all about creating purposeful, practical spaces that have good circulation, comfort, and beauty. The friction between formal and informal, clipped and chaotic, measured and mess still very much exists in my practice today. It is that precise combination that makes gardens interesting. You need both in my mind. My personal tastes are ever evolving and so is the way I feel about colour. Years ago, you would have never seen yellow in my garden, now it is a riot of yellow every spring, even the loud, egg yolk yellow, I adore it. To me, it heralds the beginning of the growing season and all that we love and look forward to.

Your West London gardens have become quite well known. There is something irresistible about a small city garden done well that feels deeply personal. What do you think small garden design reveals about a person, and what does your own garden reveal about you?

I do appreciate the fact that you recognize my personal commitment to the preciseness of the small-town garden and the work does feel deeply personal. I care hugely about each and every one of them. I am fully engaged and invested in creating as much unique beauty and style as I possibly can, big or small. I do love the minute detail, and I really enjoy devising ways to bring these tiny vignettes to fruition as hidden pleasing surprises wherever possible. 

What are some mainstays in your garden when it comes to plants and flowers, year after year?

I do love a rose, climbing or shrub, and think they bring an old-world charm to any garden. I find the complexity of the flower and their scent irresistible. 

Share with us your tips for designing small garden spaces. And also, for designing larger spaces and how these approaches might differ or even overlap. 

Figure out how the sun travels around your garden, site terraces and places to dine and relax accordingly. 

Get your boundaries sorted, plant trees responsibly and in places to hide unsightly buildings and houses.

Plant for the pollinators, think seasonally so there are flowers on offer throughout the year and not just the summer. 

Add structural elements to your planting plans, clipped shapes, interesting multistem flowering shrubs and climbers.

Extend and create views where possible, look from windows and doors and place things of interest to draw your eye into the garden.

Light your gardens responsibly and add water if possible.

Garden organically, and NEVER EVER use pesticides. 

You’ve built a career helping people create outdoor spaces that feel timeless and personal, which is really the definition of ageless style, isn’t it? Do you think the principles of great British garden design and the principles of personal style are more similar than people realize?

In broad terms, I think style personal or professional can often be obvious, but also conversely difficult to determine and measure, and it is and should look and feel very unique from person to person and designer to designer. Having said that, I guess my personal and professional styles are quite similar. 

House & Garden’s Top 50 list celebrates designers who have a unique point of view. How would you describe yours in a single sentence, and has that point of view evolved as you’ve gotten older?

We create purposeful unique gardens full of interest and beauty for the natural world.

For the women reading this who are dreaming of their own colorful English garden but don’t know where to start. What is the one piece of advice a House & Garden Top 50 designer would give them, and is there a parallel piece of style advice you’d offer alongside it?

If you are really keen to learn, read everything, visit plenty of gardens, go to your local garden centre to see what is on offer seasonally, and do my Create Academy Course on Small Gardens.

Share with us some of your hobbies and interests, outside of creating beautiful spaces, that might surprise us?

Although my work/life balance is never truly in balance; work often outweighs life. When time does allow, I love to cook and find it deeply relaxing, but I only really enjoy it on the weekends when I am not under other pressures/time restraints. During the week, I can barely boil an egg for myself. Curiously and probably not surprisingly, I love to garden in my own garden on the weekends, it’s real therapy for me and I sort of consider it a hobby. I also adore to do tapestry and have churned out many a canvas over the years.

What are five things you never leave home without? 

Sunglasses, reading specs, lipstick, a scarf, and my phone (obvious but true!)

If you could give your younger self any words of advice, what would they be?

I wish I had learned to draw and paint!

If you can’t get enough of Butter’s work and style:

How a London Landscape Designer Mastered English Country Maximalism

Create Academy Garden Tour with Rita Konig and Butter Wakefield

Homeworthy-Butter Wakefield Home Tour

Follow Butter here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/butterwakefield/

Website: https://www.butterwakefield.co.uk/ 

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