A stylish guest house in Fulham hidden at the bottom of a magical London garden

Garden rooms are always rather a dreamy concept: a space immersed in nature where it is possible to retreat and find peace and quiet, yet with the practicality to function as an extension of the main house. This two-bedroom pavilion at the foot of an enchanting London garden admirably fulfils that brief. Located in Fulham and worked on by a dream team of designers–including architects Groves Natcheva, interior designer Olivia Emery, her mother the garden designer Diana Wilson of Faber & Wilson, and the building firm Broseley–the multi-functional brick and timber guest house seamlessly blends in with spiral yew trees and ribbons of cascading jasmine, yet provides plenty of space for the inhabitants of the house to spread out.

Architects Adriana Natcheva and Murray Groves have created a curved façade, with wings on either side that house symmetrical bedrooms, overlooking delicately planted hedgerows and a flourishing garden designed by Diana Wilson of Faber and Wilson. It resembles a Japanese tea house, calm and collected yet filled with personality, with top-to-bottom Crittall windows and doors mirroring the plentiful foliage. Planning laws for the borough dictated height restrictions, yet these ended up working in the architects’ favour when it was decided the foundations would be lowered to create a sunken effect; this helps the pavilion to feel rooted in its surroundings.

A view through the kitchen area, into a bedroom. The rotating fireplace rests on a concrete plinth. On the right, the foldable kitchen table is by Chelsea Textiles and the bamboo chairs are by Rockett St George.

Martin Morrell

“The idea was to introduce a kitchen where the worktop would be at the level of the garden” Murray explains. “The kitchen is located in the bay window, so when the windows are open you feel like you are cooking in the garden”. In the bedrooms, if you are lying in bed you look straight onto a flower bed of white iceberg roses at the precise level you are sleeping at. Building firm Broseley, having constructed the pavilion itself, also crafted a winding, bricked walkway of “slow steps” down to the front of the house, creating a leisurely approach to the house's entrance, which Diana then adorned with flowering climbers. A rainwater chain captures drops of water on wet days, making the pathway sparkle as if hung with jewellery.

The interior is lined with exposed Chelsea Yellow brick and beams of European oak, forging a connection to nature; indeed it would be easy to forget the property’s close proximity to Central London. Nothing about the architecture is superfluous. As Adriana explains, “The finishes of the building are the structure of the building, and the architecture here is part of the interior design”. Groves Natcheva worked holistically to create a rustic, rough feel, which is quite different from the decoration of the main house. Timber has been left untreated and the fireplace rests on an exposed concrete plinth. Murray adds “nothing is tempered, everything was left in its raw natural state. We wanted the pavilion to feel like it engages with the environment of the garden”.