• Interviews

    • Avant Gardener Profile: Cath Kidston

    Meet Cath Kidston, designer, shopkeeper, and lifelong champion of considered, joyful living.

     

    From her West London home to her country greenhouse, she brings a tactile, nostalgic approach to gardening rooted in scent, memory, and play.

     

    With a love of pelargoniums and a design philosophy that treats green as the true neutral, Cath shares how instinct, restraint, and a sense of wonder shape both her spaces and her creative journey.

     

    Person sitting at a table with a plant and books, engaged in an activity.

     

    In her elegant West London living room, a vase of sweet peas catches the light, freshly picked from the garden at her countryside home and carefully brought into the city. They are soft and fleeting, but rooted in something lasting.

     

    Cath Kidston has always had a relationship with nature that feels both nostalgic and tactile — woven through scent, memory, and a considered sense of home.

     

    Living room corner with bookshelf, lamp, and a vase filled with flowers.

     

    It was her mother and grandmother who first opened the door to gardening. “Rub the rosemary leaves,” her mother would say. “Feel the lavender.” Gardening began as touch, as scent.

     

    And as a child, Cath remembers being physically closer to the earth — brushing up against plants, smelling them, feeling the textures of a garden from knee-height. Those early encounters shaped how she experiences plants even now: intimately, playfully, with reverence.

     

    Person tending to potted plants in a garden

     

    Pelargoniums are a lifelong fascination. When she got her first London flat, she bought one. “They’re hard to kill,” she laughs. But there’s more to them than durability.

     

    She’s collected them ever since, especially after leaving her namesake brand and building her own greenhouse. She delights in their scented leaves — rose, mint, lemon, even Coca-Cola — and the sensory joy they offer children and adults alike.

     

    Cath recounts her favourite variety being p. Graveolens, associated with one of her earliest memories. A large, sprawling plant outside near a kitchen with an unforgettable, heady scent of lemon and rose mint.

     

    Potted plant with pink flowers in a room with large windows showing greenery outside.

     

    Her approach to design has always been grounded, architectural. Before moodboards or colour swatches, there’s pencil on paper — scale drawings, plans. She attended night school in Chelsea to learn technical drawing.

     

    The results are spaces that are joyful but never fussy, layered but not overworked. She speaks often of Irish country houses and their muted colours, inherited restraint yet playful pops of colour in furniture. How green, the colour of plants, is the true neutral in a home.


    Green scissors on a red and white patterned tablecloth with blurred greenery in the foreground

     

    “Green is a staple,” she says. “It brings life to a space, and from there, you can introduce brighter colours.” Pelargoniums, again, are mentioned. Their reds and pinks, a painter’s punctuation.


    One tip she shares is placing a group of houseplants in front of a large mirror. “It multiplies the effect. It’s like building a set.” For Cath, play is essential to design — arrangements, clusters, rhythm and contrast.

    One of Cath's favourite rooms sits in Sledmere in Yorkshire. A pale blue bathroom. She also recounts a collection of photos of Leixlip Castle in Ireland, found in Vogue's Book of Houses, Gardens, People by Horst for, released in the 60's.

     

    Stone steps with potted plants in a garden setting

     

    Her creative path has always followed instinct. As a child, she had her first “shop” at the age of six, set up at home. After moving to London, she worked in shops, learning the magic of a window display.

     

    She worked for antique textile dealers. A highly formative period involved working for Nicky Haslam — “a mentor, empowering,” she says. Eventually she opened her own antique shop, before launching the brand that bore her name: Cath Kidston Interior Design and Household Effects. A self-described “chic junk shop.”

     

    Stairway leading into a garden with greenery and flowers, framed by glass doors.

     

    There were ironing board covers and plastic-coated floral tablecloths — items no one else had reimagined with such charm (and became staples in British homes). What followed was a cultural moment. Two hundred shops. Global recognition.

     

    When she left the brand around 2015, something shifted. She started noticing the seasons again. Noticing nature. The sky up above. A huge world out there she was eager to dive into.

     

    Wooden potting bench with gardening tools and plants on a stone patio

     

    Since then, she has returned to creative work through a print studio and through her new boutique, C.Atherley, a space that reflects her restrained elegance and botanical intuition. Travel continues to inspire her — Istanbul and Athens in particular for textiles.

     

     But her true design compass, she says, is memory. “You’re either a modernist or a traditionalist,” she explains. “Modernists invent. Traditionalists remember.” She aligns herself firmly with the latter. “My head is a bank of references.”

     

    Pink armchair with patterned fabrics in front of a bookshelf filled with books.

     

    She speaks warmly of her inspirations: Laura Ashley’s passion and grit. Her aunt Belinda Bellville’s boldness as a working woman. And Marie-France Cohen, founder of Bonpoint, whose eye for vision and understanding of how collections cohere made a lasting impression.

     

    “You can’t always take out the slow seller,” she says, adding that “It's the overall range is what creates the pull.”

     

    To young creatives, her advice is grounded:

     

    • Think of the long-term. “How does it roll out?”

     

    • Do something you love. You’ll need to love it when it gets hard.

     

    • Accept accidents. Creativity often begins with mistakes.

     

    • Protect the brand. Always.

     

    Tote bag hanging on a hook with a view of a room in the background

     

    There is a clarity to Cath’s point of view — gentle but grounded, practical but poetic. Her love of gardening, like her design sensibility, is an act of care. An edited richness. A kind of tactile memory.

     

    She ends by saying, “Play around. That’s the most important part.”


    And perhaps that’s her real gift — giving people permission to play, to cherish the small, and to make space for beauty in the everyday.

     

    Woman sitting in a chair reading a book in a room with bookshelves and plants.

     

    We extend huge thanks to Cath for welcoming us into her home and exploring what the natural world means to her. We hope you enjoyed coming on this journey with us.