By Donna Cornelius
Interior design and gardening design have lots of similarities, said Bunny Williams, who has written books about both.
But there’s one problem you don’t have to deal with when you’re planning a room: Furniture isn’t likely to grow.
“A sofa can be bought to the scale of the room, but one of the biggest mistakes people make in gardening is they don’t anticipate how plants will look in five or six years, how big a tree will get to be,” Williams said.
The well-known designer will be at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens’ Antiques at The Gardens to talk about her recently updated gardening book, “On Garden Style,” and about interior design. Williams will speak at noon Oct. 1 as part of the annual show’s Red Diamond Lecture Series.
Williams opened her own design company, Bunny Williams Incorporated, in 1988 after 22 years with Parish-Hadley Associates in New York. She has her own line of furniture and lighting at Bunny Williams Home.
She’s also written three design books in addition to the revamped gardening book.
“When I wrote that first book about 15 or 16 years ago, I was trying to get people to understand garden design,” Williams said. “At that time, most of the gardening books written by experts were over my head.”
She decided to update her book because “I’ve learned a lot,” she said. “And I’ve illustrated the new book in a much more sophisticated way.”
Williams said a gardening misadventure provided a good lesson – and gave her a funny story to share.
“I bought a whole garden from Wayside Gardens and put it in an old cow pasture, so it grew like crazy,” she said. “I’ve never had such big lilies in my life. But it was just a bunch of plants in the middle of a yard. With a good garden, design comes first.”
In rethinking her book, she kept modern lifestyles in mind.
“People may not want to maintain a perennial border,” she said. “They think, wait a minute – I’m not sure I want to do all that work. Less maintenance is important.”
Williams said gardens should complement the houses they surround.
“I have a traditional Federal house in northwest Connecticut, so I have a parterre garden with clipped boxwoods,” she said. “It’s an old-fashioned design but very architectural.”
She said there are two Alabama staple plants she wishes she could incorporate into her New England garden.
“When I think of Southern gardens, I think of boxwoods, crepe myrtles and magnolia grandiflora,” she said. “I can have English boxwoods but not the other two plants, which are my favorites. I think we all tend to take for granted what we can grow.”
Gardening won’t be Williams’ only topic for her program at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
“My talk will be very chatty and friendly,” she said. “It will be about freshening your house up, getting it up to date – and getting your kids to be interested in it.”
Williams said many parents bemoan their children turning up their noses at treasured family pieces.
“I hear so many people say, ‘My kids don’t want what I have,’” she said. “And the kids are buying absolute junk. I say to people, ‘Freshen your house up. Get rid of the little stuff and let your children see how pretty that antique chest is. Make it look different.’”
Her own design philosophy has changed over the years, but that’s more a reflection of dealing with the realities of everyday living than of her personal likes and dislikes, she said.
“I think what’s changed is the way people want to live today,” Williams said. “We eat in the kitchen, so do we even need dining rooms anymore? Design should fit lifestyles. We live much more casual lives, and design has to represent the person who lives there.”
Residents of Williams’ Connecticut house include not only her husband, John, but three dogs. One is a recent – and unexpected – addition.
“On my husband’s birthday, he opened the barn door and found this beautiful coonhound puppy who had been thrown away,” she said. “So as of a few weeks ago, we have a new dog. We have two other rescue dogs, terrier mixes.”
Although she’s had success training her dogs not to dig in her garden, she’s had to take more desperate measures to keep other animals from wreaking havoc there.
“We do have a deer problem,” Williams said. “We have a lot of 8-foot-high mesh deer fences attached to trees and a wooden fence on the front.
“It looks like a prison camp,” she added, laughing.
One of her favorite pieces in the Bunny Williams Home collection is a chair named after one of her dogs. It’s a solid maple reproduction of an armchair that was given to her by designer Alexander Hadley and that became her dog’s special snoozing spot.
“It’s called Charlie’s Chair,” Williams said. “We have the original in our kitchen.
“I work at one of the desks in the collection. I’m very fond of that piece. Many pieces are patterned after things I’ve found or bought. The entire collection is very personal.”
Williams’ Oct. 1 visit to Birmingham won’t be her first trip to the city.
“I love Birmingham,” she said. “I love meeting new people. And I’m always inspired by seeing different cities and the shops and houses there.”
After her lecture, Williams will greet guests and sign copies of her book at 1 p.m. as part of the Antiques at The Gardens Richard Keith Langham Reception and Book Signing Series.
For more information about the event and to buy tickets, visit www.bbgardens.org.
