Step inside Nikki Tibbles’ flower-filled country house

By Joe Feehily

Published: Tuesday, 01 February 2022 at 12:00 am

Bumpy walls and uneven floorboards may not be up there at the top of everyone’s wish list, but it was the imperfections that drew acclaimed florist and founder of Wild at Heart, Nikki Tibbles, to her home in West Sussex, two years ago. ‘I wanted a rambling old house. I don’t like anything in the country that’s perfect and straight, and I was looking for something that hadn’t been done up,’ she explains.

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Nikki nurtured her flair for floristry after leaving her first career in advertising. More than two decades on, with her international reputation firmly established, clients commission her for high-profile events as far afield as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Santorini and Barcelona. ‘I’m lucky that I love what I do, and travel is always inspiring, but I do love it here,’ she says of the Georgian farmhouse, a rural sanctuary in which to entertain friends and relax with her much-loved rescue dogs, which now provides her with the antidote to her frenetic career.

 Nikki’s floral style is famously naturalistic and opulent, and it’s no surprise to find nature, colour and texture mingled in her home. ‘I like things to feel natural, although everything has to have its place, so there is some order.’ She dispensed with the cream and beige decor as soon as she moved in. ‘I took up old flooring and carpets, and found a beautiful stone slab floor in the kitchen. I took out old cupboards, oiled and waxed and painted every floorboard, and painted the house, choosing a different colour for each room, and it only took a week,’ she recalls.

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Nikki is a great admirer of Constance Spry, and over the years she has amassed a large collection of the iconic vases the society florist designed for Fulham Pottery.

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Colour is key and each room is defined by a distinctive shade, which Nikki uses on ceilings, woodwork, shutters, walls and sometimes floorboards too. ‘I’ve always done this, to me it makes the room feel more unified. Otherwise you’ve got lines in the room made by skirtings and cornices. And why would I want my eye to be drawn to the ceiling? Unless there’s a Rubens on it.’

Sometimes Nikki’s choice of colour was determined by furnishings she already had. Sometimes she chose the colour first, then picked the furniture to match. ‘I’m naturally decisive, choosing colours doesn’t take me long. I haven’t got time to move things round endlessly,’ she says. The aspect and function of each room also influenced her choice. ‘The sitting room is very sunny so I painted it a soft blue-grey. I had a 20-year-old blue Conran sofa that I didn’t want to re-cover, so that worked well. The dining room is a smoky green, which I find very restful. My bedroom, which has windows on three sides and lots of light, is painted in ‘Setting Plaster’ by Farrow & Ball.’

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As with most rooms in the house, the walls, ceiling and woodwork in the sitting room are painted the same colour. A modern painting of three bathers – a junk shop find by an unknown artist – is displayed behind an antique sofa table that provides a useful surface for some of Nikki’s vases.

Against this colourful backdrop, Nikki mixes decorative antiques with vintage finds and modern design classics, building up layers of pattern, colour and texture. ‘I buy from antiques fairs and local dealers. I don’t really care about where something came from, how old it is, or what it’s worth. What matters is whether I like it.’

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Still Life with Lobster and Lemons by Luke Hannam hangs above the vintage cabinet on which more Constance Spry vases are displayed. Nikki bought the painting at Mccully & Crane in Rye.

 

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The hallway is the only room in which the woodwork is left unpainted. Paintings of flowers, dogs and landscapes from the 19th and 20th centuries line the stairs. An Italian pottery salt jar serves as a vase on the hall table.

Kempton Park and Ardingly are favourite hunting grounds, so too are the antiques shops of nearby Petworth. She loves to juxtapose antique treasures with 20th-century design, so in the guest bedroom, alongside a 19th-century oil painting, she has positioned an Eames ‘Lounge’ chair. A ‘Tulip’ table by Eero Saarinen is surrounded by ebonised Regency chairs, and a floor lamp by Tom Dixon illuminates a Victorian upholstered seat from behind.

Elements of humour and surprise play a part in the house. Each room has a name, which doesn’t necessarily correspond to its function. ‘I have a sewing room, although I don’t actually sew,’ says Nikki. There is also a quirkily christened ‘recipe-reading’ room, piled with vertically stacked cookery books, and a larder dubbed ‘the mini market’. While in the bathroom, three life-sized metal flamingos stand in front of the radiator.

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The ‘recipe-reading’ room, where precarious-looking piles of cookery books are actually supported by hidden shelves – if you pull one from the bottom the stack won’t collapse. The rag rug came from Caravan. A vintage cupboard, garlanded with dried oranges, is filled with glass and table linen.

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Alongside flowers, charity work plays an important part in Nikki’s life. Two years ago, she co-founded the Wild at Heart Foundation to help reduce the world’s stray dog population. Not surprisingly, references to her twin loves – flowers and dogs – are scattered like petals in every room. The dining room table stands on a brilliantly coloured Missoni rug, blooms and hounds feature in many of the paintings and on cushions, while Nikki’s eclectic collection of vases are displayed in many parts of the house. ‘So my house is part of me, and there’s no real rhyme or reason to my collecting. I don’t want it perfect, but still, everything has its place.’

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Decorative paintings bought at antiques dealers in Petworth and at antiques fairs are hung low on the walls and propped informally on the mantelpiece. The metal wall sconces came from Howe, a bespoke lighting specialist. The floor light, by Tom Dixon, was bought 25 years ago.

 

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An unused doorway at the back of the kitchen is fitted with shelves to store and display Nikki’s eclectic collection of vases and jugs, with a couple of paintings tucked in behind them.

Images: Jan Baldwin
Words: Janet Gleeson