Shop: Rebecca Cole GROWs

This past summer, I was saddened to discover that my favorite NYC spot--Japanese department store Takashimaya--had closed its doors on Fifth Avenue. My primary reason for making it a must-see was its basement restaurant, The Tea Box, which served healthy and affordable lunches. While there, I would check in on the shop's lush garden section for inspiration and unusual ways to bring the outdoors in. Thankfully, a new shop in the fur district looks like it has plenty of great garden and design ideas to share. 

The new destination spot comes courtesy of Rebecca Cole, author of one of my favorite garden books--Paradise Found: Gardening in Unlikely Places. What is special about her work is that she outfits exterior spaces with as much thought as we usually give to indoor rooms and makes sure that indoor spaces are given healthy doses of plant life in unpredictable ways. Rebecca has a full-service design company with an emphasis on implementing green practices without sacrificing style. Her website, Rebecca Cole Design, is full of beautiful images of her shop, rooms and gardens she has designed, and events she has planned. I love seeing outdoor furniture given the Sunday best treatment (notice the tarnished metal bench topped with a row of feminine pillows for an event on the roof of Rockefeller Center).

Images: Rebecca Cole Design.

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Garden Furniture Invited Indoors

My blog got its name partly from the fact that I am a habitual re-arranger of furniture. In college, I moved my bed to a new wall of my room with each of the season changes. A different apartment for each year of study made for plenty of heavy lifting. When I bought a house five years ago, I experimented with every design configuration possible. My dining room and living room switched places and never lamented their former addresses. My loft master bedroom became an office/studio while the smallest bedroom in the house became my cozy sleeping quarters. Placing a daybed in the kitchen turned a cooking space into a year-round haven thanks to the constant sunshine that poured through a wall of windows. Moving the furniture is a way of rediscovering a space--the equivalent of shopping in your own closet. It's a way of reinventing pieces and broadening their purpose. I'm a big supporter of using pieces in unexpected ways. A pair of aqua French doors that now stands in my shop at The Milkhouse has functioned as a headboard and a desk at one time or another.


In this vein, I see no distinction between indoor and outdoor furniture. I love seeing rusty chairs in a dining room or a concrete bird bath being used as a coffee table. A graying cedar potting bench could easily be made into a bathroom vanity and a wooden ladder can be used to hang towels, magazines or shoes. The dining room table in my house of experimentation (now someone else's cherished abode) was flanked by aqua plastic chairs from Ikea and a pair of vintage metal chairs that had probably done time in an outdoor bistro. The following are a few examples of garden furniture and outdoor elements given the indoor treatment to great effect.

A chippy picnic bench and folding chair make friends with a giant industrial spool table. 

Folding chairs join a farmhouse table in a modern kitchen.

Galvanized metal chairs are paired with a simple workbench in a home office. A good

 view isn't necessary in a space this inspiring.

This living room is full of outdoor elements: wire furniture, a vintage metal chair painted aqua, 
birdcages and a porcelain pedestal.

Bamboo chairs and a wicker table. All that's needed is a pitcher of iced tea and good company.

A porch swing and duvet.

Images: Old & New by Katherine Sorrell, Ryland Peters & Small 2007. Apartment: Stylish Solutions for Apartment Living by Alan Powers, photography by Chris Everard, Ryland Peters & Small 2001. The Comforts of Home by Caroline Clifton-Mogg, Ryland Peters & Small 2010. Fresh Home Magazine, Spring 2010 issue. Inside Out Magazine, May/June 2008 issue. Country Living Magazine, photography by David Butler.

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