Get outside, get creative, and enhance your wellbeing!
Many of us will be all too familiar with the great indoors. Perhaps you’ve become addicted to a really good TV box set (Sex and the City recaps, anyone?). Maybe your new phone has become your new best friend. Perhaps you are reading this inside, in your office, glued to your laptop.
Surrounded by all our wonderful gadgets, we’re in danger of forgetting the great outdoors entirely and slowly merging into our digital possessions. But summer is here, and bespoke gardening company Eden City Living wants to bring the indoors outdoors – so even those of you who hate the thought of getting your hands dirty can enjoy a garden.
Eden City Living is the interior designer of the garden world, and creates beautiful environments for all types of homes. Specialising in designing city exteriors, the company believes contemporary city homes are in need of a touch of nature.
Co-founder of Eden City Living, Jason, sums up their ethos: “The outdoor space should work on a spiritual and psychological level as well as a physical one, involving and enlightening our senses and encouraging a slower pace and time to relax.”
However small your outdoor space, Eden City Living wants you to make the most of it. With designs that suit yards, balconies, roof terraces and gardens – there’s no excuse! It’s easy to forget how soul soothing fresh air and sun can be working in the city, but knowing you have your own personal ‘eden’ to come home to makes those long days at the office that a more bit easier.
Founders Jason and Jacqueline’s love for gardening drove them to build a business around it, despite neither having gardening backgrounds. Originally Jason had trained as an actor, but learnt from his grandfather – a Head Gardener in the Cotswolds – as he grew up. He now works in both fields, which complement each other perfectly: “I can bring a bit of theatre to a garden and bring an earthiness to my acting work!”
Jacqueline was passionate about transforming her own outside space into a stress-free environment. She transformed her city balcony, and it increasingly gained her neighbours’ attention. They asked her to create a community garden, and she was shortly entered into the Bexley in Bloom awards. Her work drew the admiration of radio personality Matthew Biggs, best known for his appearances on the long-running BBC Radio 4 gardening program and a regular RHS Chelsea judge.
Jason was working on gardens large and small across London, as well as teaching a gardening club, when he was asked to design and plant a brand new garden by a property development company. He teamed up with Jacqueline, and Eden City Living was born.
“Jason and I noted that many new builds in London have balconies which are stark and empty,” says Jacqueline. “Our vision is to make outdoor living accessible for those living with limited space.”
Both are now members of the London Horticultural Society, an exclusive club reserved for anyone who’s anyone in the gardening world. Jason and Jacqueline are used to designing to suit your space, and your ideas. You may never have considered your outside area useable, but Eden City Living can show you how to utilise the space you do have.
Get in touch with your environment again, and create a space that you want to be in. Eden City Living’s portfolio stretches from modern, sleek looks to earthy havens and their client list is expanding by the day. The duo even had London’s luminous-haired mayor Boris Johnson in touch.
Eden City Living is making escaping the concrete jungle a breeze. Plants absorb dirty carbon dioxide and turn it into clean, fresh oxygen. So aside from the aesthetic pleasure, it can help you to detox too!
“We offer a bespoke service to customers, in the hope of enhancing their wellbeing in addition to the aesthetics of their home,” says Jason. “Use of natural materials of planting, stone, wood or a more contemporary metal look; it’s dependent on the client.”
Ready to turn your sad city patch into a modern day paradise? Next time you come home from a hard day’s work, don’t reach for the remote. Get outdoors and take a breath of fresh air, it’s time to embrace Mother Nature again.
