Over more than two decades of nurturing Cabbages & Roses from a wisp of an idea into a beloved British brand, our founder Christina amassed a bijou collection of books that beautifully capture the spirit of her Cabbage patch. From the crafty and instructional to the endlessly inspirational, her words – and her wisdom – continue to guide us.

Now, as we welcome two of our favourite tomes back in stock, we’re delighted to share extracts from Living Life Beautifully and A Life In Fabric. The perfect way to while away a happy moment of pause.

 

Living Life Beautifully

A Hive of Industry

“I have never not worked,” says Christina, whose sleeves are metaphorically nearly always rolled up and who is always poised to get stuck in to the task at hand. “I don’t know what it’s like not to.” Indeed, even when she had small children in tow, she frequently contrived inventive ways in which to employ her aesthetic talents that would effectively bridge her home and work lives—whether that extended to making other people’s houses beautiful or to applying her eye to the creation of seductively lovely picnic baskets.

 

 

In a sense, those nascent days of industry formed the blueprint for Cabbages & Roses. “It came into being in the vegetable garden—which is still my obsession. All I ever wanted was to create something built around not just an idea, but a real life. Something that could be beautiful, that could move and charm, but that would be tangible, unfeigned, and sincere—keeping its sense of humour all the while.” The final characteristic in the Cabbages & Roses narrative is imperative, for it is inconceivable to think of Christina without imagining her smiling wryly or, even more likely, collapsing into fits of giggles.

 

 

Her latest favourite thing, she explains with unbridled enthusiasm, is the newest addition to the house: a celestially white studio. Built above the stable, it overlooks the same vegetable garden that gave rise to Cabbages & Roses, and has replaced Christina’s kitchen table as her new hive of industry. “It is heaven, and just wonderful to have somewhere to go to that marks the beginning and the end to the day,” she enthuses.

 

 

That, in essence, encapsulates the spirit of Cabbages & Roses, nourished as it is by halcyon days spent at Brook Cottage. The winding incremental changes made—not least the studio or the new dream-like gazebo that has reclaimed the courtyard and now provides a sitting room for summer—continue to inform the perennially growing business. And, as with the garden in which the business was conceived, poignantly beautiful pieces appear in the shop, only to be replaced—Mother Nature-like—just as soon as they’ve been bought with something new and equally exquisite. “I don’t understand how you can do a business that isn’t about what you love,” says Christina, as if to underline her guiding axiom. “You have to love it—it’s the only way you’ll ever be happy.”

 

A Life in Fabric

A Life Outdoors

Flowers and foliage, inside and out, are essential ingredients for appealing rooms and gardens. I have discovered that a simple colour palette in the garden calms the visual outlook and creates an undemanding landscape of great beauty.

The moment when cow parsley, also known as Queen Anne’s lace, springs to life in the hedgerows is a joyful event. Its gigantic sprigs of charming blooms are swiftly brought inside and placed in vases in every room of the house. I then turn to delicate Ammimajus, which I sow twice a year to ensure a succession of blooms all summer long.

Bringing fabrics outdoors is a wonderful way to extend your interior decoration into the garden. It is as well to plan your planting so that it co-ordinates with your chosen palette, but white flowers and green or silver leaves are especially versatile. They look lovely when paired with fabrics in charcoal tones and can also brave yellows, pinks and lilacs.

 

Charcoal  Stripes

Many of our fabrics look perfectly at home in the great outdoors. For an entirely new twist, we recently experimented with a bold charcoal stripe printed onto a white linen ground. Although this pattern is a definite departure from our usual faded fl orals and gentle stripes, it has made a strikingly beautiful cloth for this long outdoor table. The colours work well with the green and white of a summer garden, especially this one, in which the dark courtyard pool reflects the charcoal of the fabric. Black pots of beautiful silvery-grey lavender, waiting to be planted, provide more greyscale accents. Next year these lavender plants will have white flowers – further accentuating the simple colour scheme.

As a stylist, I am always thinking about what the camera will see – whether the colours and shapes will jar or enhance one another.

I find that sticking to a cohesive palette, sometimes even down to the food, makes it much easier to create a dramatic and striking setting. In this garden, the white flowers and green foliage make a great impact with the charcoal and white stripes. On the table, the green grapes and gigantic white bowls of bright green lettuce are as decorative as any flower. In the winter months, fresh herbs in pots – especially silvery sage, thyme and rosemary – are more readily available than flowers and look lovely inside and out.

 

 

Blues and Lilacs

All of our various blue colour ways have a serene, timeless feel. Each one is a gentle friend that demands little attention, but brings a comforting and demure ambience to an outdoor setting.

Living in the UK, my instincts tend to lead me to pink-toned fabrics, which are forgiving under grey skies. However, blue fabrics can also look very lovely, even when there is no blue sky for them to reflect. The sparsely spaced roses of blue Hatley on a crisp white ground are heart-stoppingly beautiful when used to cover a lunchtime table.   

My first book, Vintage Chic, featured a photograph of a simple tent made from printed cotton canvas, which was held up by a washing line in the dappled shade of two trees beside a babbling brook.  The enduring appeal of this photograph, first published nearly 20 years ago, proves that lovely design will endure beyond what is fashionable and transient. The blues, with their affinity for water, slip gently into lilac, and the greenery of an English summer garden becomes the fortification and consort of this much-neglected shade.

 

 

By this English swimming pool, lunch is laid out on a blue Hatley linen tablecloth, bringing to mind Mediterranean holidays, good food and blue skies. Perhaps this is why the colour blue is perceived as a happy colour: serene and fresh, for many of us it is a reminder of warm weather and happy times by the sea. Perfectly suited to a summer lunch, blue Hatley is summer personified.

With their tendency to crumple and their magical ability to make one feel cool in the heat and warm in the cold, our linen fabrics are ideally suited to outdoor spaces and will help you create a relaxed, summery ambience. The fabric will soften over time and become more beautiful with each wash, especially when left to air dry.

 

 

Most of the colours in our fabric and wallpaper collections have been inspired by hues found in nature, and our lilac colour way. is no exception. This glorious lilac tablecloth, in the Hatley design, was an absolute joy to style, with the perfectly timed hostas offering up their short-lived flowers just in time for our photography. Not to mention the divine sweet peas and lavender flowers with their delicate scent and colour – seen against the lush greenery growing on the walls of Brook Cottage, they demonstrate just how harmoniously lilac and green work together. An assortment of delicate mauve china from my collection was brought out to complete the table decoration, demonstrating that the interior and exterior colour palettes can and should be regarded as one and the same.

Neither contemporary nor old fashioned, lilac is welcome in any situation and adds just enough colour to be enchanting, even in an urban environment, or with grey winter skies. It was once the grandest, rarest colour in the world, the preserve of royalty alone, so we are fortunate to have access to this wonderful shade today.

 

 

Living Life Beautifully by Christina Strutt, published by CICO Books (£30)

Photography by Simon Brown © CICO Books

 

A Life in Fabric by Christina Strutt, published by CICO Books (£35)

Photography by James Scott-Long and Belle Daughtry © CICO Books