In full bloom: An afternoon with Layla Robinson
A sunlit collaboration among flowers, fabric, and friendship
At the end of the day (and the beginning, and usually somewhere around elevenses), I’ve found it’s always the same thing: relationships. The quiet, layered kind. The ones that turn ordinary days into ones you remember.
This is a little story about one such beginning.
Julia with a wreath by Layla
Back when I lived in Hay-on-Wye, running our little Bed & Breakfast, Radnor House, I almost met Layla Robinson a number of times. She was one of those names that drifted through conversations with a kind of warm inevitability. The sort of person people describe with words like lovely, brilliant, and oh, you’d absolutely get on.
Then you see her work - wild, sculptural dried flower designs, created from blooms grown and foraged in the Herefordshire hills - and you understand: this is someone who doesn’t just arrange flowers, she tells stories with them.
Layla lives in an off-grid cabin perched up in the hills above Hay, with her husband, three children, red border collie, and two cats. It’s a fertile plot bordered by wilderness, ancient hill forts and winding lanes. It’s here that she grows and gathers her ingredients: twigs, seed heads, berries, grasses, flowers - transforming them into truly one-of-a-kind interior pieces.
“What I make is very individual,” Layla says. “It offers a unique way of bringing the liveliness, movement and joy of nature and the outdoors into an interior design. It can sit beautifully in a modern, minimal setting as much as a traditional one—with the aim of bringing an element of fun into it too.”
Her work has appeared at the Hay Festival Winter Weekend, Oriel Myrddin Gallery, The Camp Good Life Festival, and in Country Living, Period Living, and Country Homes & Interiors. But what matters most, she says, is how people feel when they see her pieces. “My work is often described as making the heart sing,” she says. “That’s the best kind of feedback.”
So when the chance came to dress Layla (all in white) for a photoshoot, I said yes without hesitation.
And I’m so glad I did.
In real life, Layla is somehow even more magical. Warm, funny, utterly real. The kind of person you feel you’ve known for years by the time the kettle’s boiled. Together with Justine of Harp Studio, who hosted us in her beautiful home, and Andrea of Wild Meadow, who photographed it all with her usual quiet brilliance, we spent an afternoon making pictures - and more importantly, memories.
There was linen and laughter. Flower crowns and big pockets. The light did what it wanted (as it always does) and we followed it through the house, arranging, re-arranging, trying not to crush the sweet peas. It was one of those days that feels stitched into the clothes somehow.
Below are a few glimpses from that sun-drenched afternoon, a seedling of a collaboration, and, we hope, the start of something longer-growing.
You can find more of Layla’s work here — and keep an eye out for her new book, available to pre-order now.
From the Acre, with flowers in our hair,
Julia
x
PS some of our most loved white and cream linen clothes are just waiting for you…
The Box Dress
The Box Dress is named after its box pleats at front, back, sleeves and pockets.
Pretty lace trim and drawstring neckline adds subtle but important details.
Great over a petticoat slip with sandals or boots.
The First Wrap
The The First Wrap has been designed to add a whisper of a layer over a dress.
Made from gauze linen with cotton lace details, the extra long straps allow for a beautiful and ‘proper’ flourish of a casually tied bow.
