The on-site farm and gardens at Thyme, the 150-acre countryside hotel in the charming Cotswold village of Southrop, have always been at the heart of the family-run countryside retreat.
When owners Caryn and Jerry Hibbert moved from London over two decades ago, their original plan had been to open a small cookery school with a clutch of rooms. Since then, they've expanded the estate to include an on-site spa, pool, pub (one of the best in the Cotswolds), barn restaurant and event space – and glorious gardens. No visit to Thyme is complete without a wander around them.
Six-time Chelsea Flower Show award winner and Top 50 Garden Designer Bunny Guinness helped Caryn to create the series of gardens that frame the 16th-century barns, houses and cottages as well as the working gardens and orchards on the farm that supply flowers for the house, food for the kitchen, herbs for the Meadow spa and their Bertioli beauty products. It's the veggies, plants and flowers from these impressive gardens that can also be seen on the cushions, wallpaper, and curtains throughout every room, cottage and suite. Each botanical print delicately hand-drawn by Caryn, from carrots to radishes and buttercups.
Thyme's newest print collection, the Cutting Garden, launched with a new set of wallpapers, fabrics, lampshades and scents, and is best showcased in four newly refurbished bedrooms decked out in head-to-toe of the new prints. On a recent visit, we toured the new rooms with Caryn and her daughter Milly, who now works as the property’s general manager.
Each of the maximalist, botanical prints are watercolour designs by Caryn herself and in Thyme style, each room eccentrically focuses on only one of them – from deep purple elderflower to mixed pinks and purple phloxes. Find them chicly covering lampshades, headboards, sofas and wallpapers – all of which are also available to buy from the shop if you want to bring a piece of the English countryside home with you. But definitely don't skip seeing them in person.
This story originally appeared on House & Garden UK.
