Just the Best

Bunny Williams comes from Charlottesville, VA, where Mr. Jefferson is revered and horse people thrive and customs like naming a girl Bruce (after her mother) and calling her Bunny persist.

Now, Williams, an interior designer familiar to any reader of Elle Decor or Architectural Digest, lives on Park Avenue in New York, and off Point of Rocks Road in Falls Village, where she has famously turned a nice old farmhouse and barn into a showplace and conservatory. This is where she weekends with her husband, antiques dealer John Rosselli, and this is where Williams and her head gardener at the time, Naomi Blumenthal, dreamed up Trade Secrets seven years ago as a way to pare down a bulging greenhouse and aid a favorite project, Women’s Support Services. So this is why I am visiting Williams this Saturday morning, to learn something about this annual garden show and sale, which is scheduled for May 19 and 20 at LionRock Farm in Sharon, CT.

I turn into the driveway, wait while the gate opens leisurely by electric impulse and park near the conservatory, the place for potted plants in their glory, Williams explains (the greenhouse is where plants can wax and wane out of public view). And it’s the place for morning visitors like me. This is also where devoted gardeners and collectors attending Trade Secrets, a few years back, warmed up during a late spring snow before hitting the tents and tables again.

As Blumenthal recalls, women in high heels sloshed through freezing rain and sleet and snow in pursuit of rare plants, vintage linens and garden ornaments. "It was wonderful."

This Saturday morning, however, is bright and promising and Williams is serving coffee in an Edwardian silver pot she inherited. "I believe you should use beautiful things," she says, pouring very strong coffee into very small cups. They are beautiful, too.

She has spent her whole life around lovely things. Her first job after junior college ("when I was growing up, a career for women was not thought about") was in a prestigious and perfectly located antiques store on 57th Street in New York.

"Always go to the top," she says. "That’s my motto. If you want antiques, go to the best antiques shop. Look at the best. Train your eye. Set your standards high."

From there she went to work for Sister Parish and about 20 years ago opened her own firm, Bunny Williams Incorporated, making a name for herself designing big, comfortable, luxe interiors.

Here in Falls Village she has designed big comfortable, luxe interiors for herself and she has designed her gardens, too.

"It’s not just the plants. It’s an art form," an art form she practices for herself, alone.

"I’m not a professional garden designer. This garden is simply my indulgence. My pleasure."

Or not.

Last year she planted 50 mountain laurels, all of which died. "You live and learn," she says.

And one of the things Williams learned is that plants are always changing, a quality that adds considerable luster to the practice of designing interiors. "This sofa doesn’t grow," she tells me. "The carpet doesn’t mildew. And no one calls me in the middle of the night saying ‘My camelias died.’ "

So she gardens for herself and backs Trade Secrets as a way to delight other garden lovers and aid Women’s Support Services. And from the start, Trade Secrets has been fabulously successful, drawing the top dealers in rare plants, garden ornaments and books on horticulture. As Williams says, "Look at the best. Train your eye. Set your standards high."