Veranda March/April 2022

“Outdoor work and collaboration with the great forces of Nature brings a peace and satisfaction that can seldom be attained.” LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT BEATRIX Farrand’s words about working in her garden, penned in 1954 for her final weekly column for the Bar Harbor Times, and now reproduced in a new book about her life and work 1, resonated deeply with me—even though these days my “collaboration” with nature consists merely of pleading with my forced bulbs to bloom 2 or my myrtle topiaries to stay alive and squeezing in a leisurely walk in the woods 3 when I find an extra hour. Farrand, the first American woman to fully inhabit the title of landscape architect (rather than garden designer), was something of a force of nature herself. A prolific pioneer of the profession, she…

THE FIND • Duquette’s Dawnridge Collection for Jim Thompson, by Hutton Wilkinson THE INSPIRATION • Even the superbly articulate Hutton Wilkinson stumbles to describe Dawnridge, the late Tony Duquette’s Beverly Hills estate. “How shall I describe the indescribable?” he asks. The answer arrives in the language of its sorcery—28 exuberant designs in fabric, wallpaper, and trim that conjure the maximalist magic of the home owned and preserved by Wilkinson and his wife, Ruth, since Duquette’s death in the late 1990s. “Every object at Dawnridge has a story, a provenance, and, I like to think, a human energy,” says Wilkinson, “casting a spell to enchant those who live, work, and visit there.” Now, from carved Chinese motifs honoring Dawnridge’s spectacular furniture and doors to Duquette’s passion for malachite and leopard print, that…

JAN SHOWERS has a serious eye for antiques. The designer, renowned for her Dallas showroom filled with French period pieces and Louis XVI glamour, also knows that when it comes to antiques shopping, the eye is only as good as the stomach. “If you’re hungry, forget it,” she says. That’s why hosting a luncheon at her Hillsboro, Texas, home is both fun for Showers and a strategic godsend for her friends headed from the Dallas environs to the biannual Round Top Antiques Fair. For more than 50 years, this legendary roundup of antiques dealers and buyers has been taking place in the quaint Texas town smack in the middle of nowhere. And it has been 50 years since the designer and her husband bought the white-columned house that Showers had coveted…

IT’S FITTING that Kimberly Schlegel Whitman and Shelley Johnstone Paschke first met around a dinner table—at the New York Botanical Garden’s annual Orchid Dinner, in fact (Veranda is a sponsor). Whitman, a Dallas-based author and lifestyle expert, and Paschke, an interior designer with boutiques in Illinois and Florida, bonded over their shared love of design and entertaining, and before long, were cooking up a collaborative book project—a celebration of 34 female hostesses and the colorful customs they bring to their tables. Published this spring by Gibbs Smith, A Loving Table is a lavish buffet of sumptuous place settings, inspired centerpieces, and creative ways to gather with loved ones, from Fruzsina Keehn’s commitment to everyday elegance at her home in Beverly Hills to a swoon-worthy Bahamian backyard wedding reception à la…

IT’S JUST THE MOST gorgeous room to be in. It’s such a vibrant purple!” With characteristic charm and warmth, jewelry designer Mish Tworkowski cannot help but gush a bit. And with good reason: The Trellis Room, the centerpiece of his newly opened Mish Fine Jewelry studio in Palm Beach, is perhaps the most Mish room there’s ever been. For one, there’s that lavender hue so linked to the designer that friends and fans call it “Mish Purple.” The room’s custom-lattice walls are painted with it—an unabashed declaration of aesthetic confidence as well as an ebullient hug. It’s hard to imagine a more Mish setting than his storied former studio in downtown Manhattan. But when that Bond Street lease was coming due in 2020, the designer and his husband/business partner, architect Joseph…

ISTILL VIVIDLY REMEMBER noticing topiary for the first time. I was just 3 or 4 years old, riding the bus into the local market town near where we lived in Dorset to go shopping with my mother. I always wanted to sit upstairs so I could see over the hawthorn hedge of a particular house we passed, enthralled by the incredible wedding-cake clipped yew in the front garden. It was so precise, so perfectly formed, and I was mesmerized. In almost all the gardens I’ve designed around the world since I began my practice in 1986, I have used topiary to some degree, no doubt influenced by those early memories. Traditionally, topiary was considered a very formal element, associated with large, grand gardens and set out in rigid patterns to accentuate…