Kensington Townhouse

A whole-house planting scheme for a Kensington townhouse, specified with Studio Stahl and installed in April 2026.

The largest tree arrived without soil

The piece the scheme is built around is a branched ficus at 250cm, supplied in hydroculture rather than compost. That is an unusual choice for a private house and it was a deliberate one.

Trees of this size fail in finished interiors for one reason above all others: water. Compost in a large planter dries unevenly — the top can be bone dry while the base is standing wet — and by the time the leaves say something is wrong the roots have already decided. Inert aggregate takes most of that unevenness out, and leaves nothing to spill onto new floors when the tree is moved.

What it does not do is remove the need to check. The level indicators sold with these systems promise more than they deliver, so the method we left with the house is the one we use ourselves: test at the root, then water what needs it.

In a house that had only just been completed, that mattered more than any argument about growth rate.

One family of pots, chosen before the rooms were ready

The planters are a single Grecian family — Athena, Artemis and Poseidon — specified across three sizes, with a rounded vase in green for the smaller position.

Houses furnished room by room tend to collect planters one at a time, six months apart, and end up with six unrelated objects that were each defensible on the day they were chosen. Fixing the family at the start meant each room could be planted whenever it was finished without the scheme drifting. It is a small piece of discipline that only shows itself a year later.

Trees you look past, not at

Beyond the branched specimen, the planting is deliberately quiet. Two Ficus Robusta at 200cm, planted two to a pot so each reads as one full tree rather than two thin ones. A Radermachera hainanensis at 180cm, finer and brighter in leaf, which holds a corner without the weight of another fig.

Nothing here is a feature plant except the one that is meant to be. In an interior of this standard, the planting that works is the planting you stop noticing after a week and would miss immediately if it went.

Schemes settle after the install

One tree from the original specification turned out not to suit its position once the room was in use, so it came back and the value went to credit. Two months later that credit went on a money tree, a Boston fern and two smaller pots for positions that had only become obvious by living in the house.

We would rather a scheme be adjusted than defended. A planting plan drawn against a floor plan is a good starting position and very rarely the final one.

Credits

Design: Studio Stahl
Planting and installation: Plant Drop

Plant consultant: Laila Howard