The Berkshire

Statement interior planting through the clubhouse, restaurants and bars at The Berkshire, following a renovation the club and its membership decided on together. Interiors designed and styled by Helen Hooper Interiors. We specified, installed, and still maintain the scheme.

A room full of people who notice

A members' club is a harder audience than a hotel. Guests pass through a hotel once and forgive a great deal. Members come every week for twenty years, sit in the same chair, and see the same plant from the same angle several hundred times a year.

That changes what you can specify. Anything that peaks and then declines gets noticed on the way down, by people who are entitled to say so. So the scheme is built from plants that hold their form rather than plants that look best on the day they arrive.

Clubhouse, not conservatory

The instinct in a golf clubhouse is to bring the outside in, and it is usually a mistake — the view through the window is doing that already, and it does it better. The planting works against the interiors instead: soft where the rooms are hard, structural where they are busy, and quiet enough that it reads as part of the furnishing rather than as an arrangement.

Kentia palms carry the larger spaces. They tolerate interior light better than almost anything at their scale, and they have the right manners for a room like this — architectural without being spiky, generous without taking over.

And we look after it

One of our horticulturists visits regularly — watering to the plant rather than to a rota, feeding through the growing season, pruning, cleaning leaves, and catching pests while they are still a small problem. In a building where the same people see the same plants every week, that is the difference between a scheme and a moment.

More on how that works on our plant maintenance page.

Credits

Client: The Berkshire
Interiors: Helen Hooper Interiors
Planting: Plant Drop

Plant consultant: Dom Butler