It is the first warm(ish) weekend of spring and there is no more snow predicted (whoot!). By Sunday evening I’m hoping to tuck into a lovely holiday dinner knowing that my body earned the extra calories of those au gratin potatoes – having cleaned up countless piles of spring garden debris.

Every spring I seem to want to try styling my patio a little differently for the season ahead. Do other designers have this sort of style ADD? I hope (and suspect) so (right?).  Last year I wanted something clean and modern – where as this year I’m feeling more bohemian and contemplating how to loosen things up a bit.

These garden parasols caught my eye – I’m surprisingly charmed by the chintz.  Don’t ask me why , and I don’t even know that I can legitimately pull off this look. The chintz brings back memories of road trips to country house inns back when we lived in England. Those places never felt as cosy and comfortable as you might imagine – but I always appreciated the dedication to an era of decoration that I previously thought had ended sometime around 1989.  And they always had really nice gardens…which was perfect for me. At the time, I had just started my career as a landscape designer and was so eager to soak up every ounce of this aspect of British culture.

So, to me these parasols by Sunbeam Jackie are a nod to an era. (The era where I learned a whole lot about gardens by driving around England – and the 80’s). The fabrics are all vintage and no two are the same. It is a nod to nostalgia that is feeling just right.

 

images: House and Garden