Petersham Nurseries and Richmond Park

I have lots of blog posts waiting patiently to be shared and not enough time to write them up!! Things have been busy lately both at work and home and so I have been neglecting my poor little blog a bit. I am determined to remedy this even if the posts are woefully belated - I hope you'll bear with me!

One such post is this one, of our trip to Petersham Nurseries in Richmond from a month or so ago. We celebrated a final 30th birthday lunch there with my family and had the loveliest few hours eating and drinking our way through multiple courses among the flowers and plants and achingly tasteful but totally unaffordable homewares. 

It's a place that gets a lot of hype, and I am always a little wary of those sorts of places, for fear that they won't live up to it, but it is also a place that R and I had been curious about for a long time. We had stumbled across it once before and told ourselves that we would try to come back, when we had a few more pennies to spend! 

It is undoubtedly a very special place, divided roughly into a rambling garden centre, cafe, restaurant and interiors shop. The lovely thing about it is the way that all of those features overlap and merge together so that you feel as though you've entered another little world, hidden from the hustle and bustle of London, fragrant and bough-lined, with endless little corners and nooks filled with trailing plants and crumbling plant pots. 

The shop was filled with many lovely things but everything was eye-wateringly expensive and R had his eye on me so I didn't make any purchases. 

It has a lovely relaxed higgledy piggledy feel to it, in a lavish sort of way. 

The most beautiful french garden furniture I have ever seen!

After an hour or so wandering around the garden centre and shop we sat down to lunch at a very large, very secluded table laden with flowers. 

 

The restaurant is in a green house with a rough floor and trailing plants which makes it a very lovely place to sit and chat, amongst the smells of jasmine and roses, and the soft shadows of nearby ferns. 

The food is broadly Mediterranean with a middle eastern twist, and was all delicious if expensive! It is definitely a special treat sort of place!

Mum had the most delicious wild garlic and ricotta ravioli that everyone was very jealous of. I had braised cuttlefish with chilli, tomato, fennel and polenta that was also lovely. 

Bresaola with radish, horseradish and creme fraiche.

Mozarella with baby artichoke, nasturtium leaves and oregano. Mmmm!

The main courses were also delicious, as was the wine!

My three favourites!

And the puddings, oh my! Especially the cannoli. 

We also ended up doing a bit of inadvertent celeb-spotting as we ate our puddings as at a certain point we looked up to see Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and their baby arrive and sit down on a table a few metres away from us. As a long-time Gossip Girl fan (shhh, don't tell) I was pretty excited! And then, to top that excitement off, our waitress told us that our table had originally been reserved for Brangelina (hence the seclusion, size and flower-bedeckedness!), but they cancelled at the last minute. I'm not sure whether that could possibly be true, but it added to the general wine-fuelled excitement and laughter. 

After lunch we wandered up to Richmond Park to stretch our legs and sober up a bit(!). It was the most glorious sun-filled evening, with long shadows and soft golden light. 

And we came across a heard of deer settling down for the evening with a view of London's tower-blocks in the distance. 

Such gentle beasts, the highlight of Richmond Park! 

A lovely day!