Hilton Seven Hills

Interior and exterior planting throughout Hilton Seven Hills in Cobham, following a complete renovation by Applied Studio.

Two schemes that have to agree

A hotel is one of the few buildings where the inside and the outside are looked at together. Guests arrive through the grounds, eat looking out at them, and judge the whole thing as a single impression. Plant the two separately and it shows immediately — a tropical interior behind a glass wall with English shrubs on the other side of it reads as two buildings.

So the interior and exterior were specified as one job: forms and colours that carry through the glass, and an exterior scheme that holds its shape in February, because a hotel does not get an off season.

Planting at hotel scale

Hotel spaces are larger than they look in a drawing and eat plants that would fill a domestic room. Lobbies, restaurants, circulation and terraces all needed specimens with enough presence to register from across a room, rather than a greater number of smaller pieces, which is the usual mistake and always looks like padding.

Credits

Client: Hilton Seven Hills, Cobham
Design: Applied Studio
Planting: Plant Drop

Plant consultant: Dom Butler