Yoga Cottage, Dorset

A rebuilt barn on the Dorset coast, now a yoga retreat with a studio, three ensuite guest rooms and a snug. Planted throughout with Violet & George, installed February 2025.

No soil anywhere in the building

Around twenty plants went in, and every one of them was potted in hydroculture rather than compost. That was the first decision and it settled most of the others.

A yoga studio is the one room where soil is genuinely a bad idea. Fungus gnats breed in wet compost and they will find their way to the ceiling of a room where people spend an hour on their backs. Compost dust travels. Watering cans mark floors that are meant to be lain on. None of that is fatal in a kitchen; all of it is noticeable here.

The second reason is simpler. A retreat is empty between bookings, and nobody living on site is going to learn twenty different watering habits. Inert aggregate is far more forgiving of a fortnight's absence than compost, which tends to be either sodden or bone dry by the time anyone comes back.

It does not water itself, though. The gauges supplied with these systems are not reliable enough to trust on their own, so the instruction left with the house was the one we follow ourselves: test at the root, then water what needs it.

Three heights, three jobs

The scheme was specified in tiers rather than as a list of nice plants.

At the top, a pair of money trees at 190–210cm and two Kentia palms at 170–180cm — enough height to hold a corner in a room with a lot of air in it, and both forgiving of the flat, even light a north-facing studio tends to have.

In the middle, three Swiss cheese plants on moss poles at 150–180cm and a branched umbrella plant, which give the living spaces volume without another tree trunk. Then Homalomena 'Maggy', a bamboo lady palm and a cast iron plant for the positions where something has to survive being ignored.

At the bottom, the small ones — pilea, Philodendron 'Shangri-La', devil's ivy, satin pothos, peperomia — in rattan, straw and small Galestro terracotta, for guest rooms and shelves where a large plant would be in the way.

The planters run warm and quiet to match the scheme: Grecian Poseidon and Eros, Bergs terracotta, a Piet Boon vessel, woven baskets. Nothing shiny, nothing black.

Three hours from the nursery

All of it went to Dorset on our own van, and all of it was potted on arrival rather than delivered pre-planted — twenty pots made up on site over one install.

This is the part clients outside London usually assume is impossible. It isn't. It just has to be planned as one visit rather than six deliveries, which is also the only way the plants arrive in the condition they left in.

Credits

Interior design: Violet & George
Architect: VESP Architects
Contractor: NBC
Photography: Sarah Griggs
Styling: Hannah Simmons
Planting, planters and installation: Plant Drop