Private Residences
60 Curzon, Mayfair
Four schemes at one Mayfair address over thirteen months — Elicyon's show apartment terrace, two private apartments and the building itself. A case study about access as much as planting.
Over thirteen months we planted at 60 Curzon in Mayfair four separate times, for four separate clients: the show apartment designed by Elicyon, two private apartments through two other studios, and the building itself.
The first job in a building is the hard one
Nothing about delivering plants to a building like this is obvious from the street. Contractors do not use the front door. There is a separate entrance, a sign-in, an access card, a route through the car park, a car lift only the concierge team operates, and shoe covers on at all times.
None of that is difficult once you know it. All of it is a problem the first time, with a lemon tree at two metres and a one-hour delivery slot.
A terrace planted to be looked at from inside
The largest of the four was the terrace: a pair of lemon trees at 180–200cm, two Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood', two caned eucalyptus at 160–180cm and two Fatsia japonica, potted on site into Provincial terracotta vases, braided urns, Bergs Piccolina pots and a chalk-white Grecian Athena.
Terraces at this level are mostly seen through glass, from a room that has been designed to within an inch of itself. That argues against a planted border and in favour of a small number of trees in good pots — objects that hold their shape in winter and read as furniture rather than gardening. Lemons do that better than almost anything; the acers give the season a change to make; the eucalyptus carries height on a thin stem where a fuller tree would have blocked the view it was meant to frame.
Everything was potted on the terrace rather than delivered pre-planted. On a job with a car lift and a shoe-cover rule, that is not a preference. It is the only way the weights work.
Then the rest of the building
The apartments came afterwards, and separately.
One studio took a single fiddle-leaf fig at 190–220cm, white glove, carried upstairs, into a Modernist terracotta vase. Another specified a black olive at 180–200cm in the same chalk-white Athena pot we had used on the terrace a year earlier — chosen independently, which is either coincidence or evidence that the pot is right for the building. The building's own duty manager ordered lemon trees, Limelight hydrangeas and Galestro terracotta for one of the garden residences.
Four clients, one address, no two briefs alike.
Why this happens
Designers ask each other who to use, and the honest advantage in a building like this is not horticultural. It is that we had already been through the car park, already knew the lift, already had the site rules on file. A studio working to a photography date does not want to spend its morning inducting a new supplier.
Good specimens are the reason to call us. Knowing the building is the reason to call us again.
Credits
Show apartment: Elicyon
Planting, planters and installation: Plant Drop
Planning planting into a fit-out? Talk to us early — the light survey is worth more before the ceiling goes in than after. See more projects or email projects@plantdrop.co.uk.
