Botanical Stylist Yasuyo Harvey’s Stunning Transformation of a Standard Suburban Semi
As with each of the films in the series, we aim to show how adherence to five key design principles – space, light, materials, nature and decoration – allows you, in Matt’s words, “to live a better and more fulfilled life.” Here, we examine Yasuyo and Phil Harvey’s relationship to nature and see how they gently surround themselves with natural materials, furniture and objects, championing the delicate detritus of nature and giving it aesthetic value.
Yasuyo’s career as a botanical stylist took root in Japan, where she made house shrines, or kamidana for her grandparents. The word translates to “god or spirit shelf” – a display of natural ephemera that would provide a focal point of daily workshop for the household. Yasuyo has brought that practice with her to Worcester Park, where she lives with her husband, Phil, and their son.
The film takes us on an exploration of Yasuyo’s aesthetic, beginning in her garden studio over sushi wrapped in homegrown persimmon leaves. The studio is a space for Yasuyo to experiment with shape and texture, but also a space she shares with her family. Constructed from scorched wood, the blackened design was inspired by Peter Zumthor’s Serpentire Pavillion. For Yasuyo, it provides the perfect backdrop to the garden’s thick, verdant foliage, which incorporates plants native to Japan.
The house itself is muted and modest and orientated towards the outdoors. A Japanese box garden, or tsuboniwa, built from oak railway sleepers is visible from the kitchen, as is a simple bird bath, a bowl on a plinth thoughtfully nestled into a dense bed of foliage for the birds to balance on.
Yasuyo’s aesthetic is more of a philosophy – a way of finding beauty in fragility. It’s a philosophy apparent in the golden seams of her kintsugi collection and her own botanical displays that change and collapse over time, before being rebuilt, repurposed or replanted. The cumulative effect of this is hard to describe: “What have we ended up with?” says Phil. “Our house, really.”
