Inside a perfumer’s paradise garden in Regent’s Park

I don’t know how many times I passed perfumer Linda Pilkington’s Regent’s Park house while sitting on the bus and wondered: who lives in that grand stucco villa? Marooned between main road and railway, amid a towering jungle of trees, it always had something theatrical about it. Then, one day, I passed and the vast ash tree that screened it from the road was gone, and I saw straight into the garden, where it was clear the owners — whoever they were — were embarking on extensive works.

One year on, I find myself sitting with Pilkington in her granite-topped kitchen, looking out on the finished product — a lush mix of formal and more fantastical planting inspired by signature notes in Ormonde Jayne, the international fragrance house she launched in 2001. Still proudly independent, the Mayfair-based atelier made its name popularising prized eastern ingredients including champaca and oudh in the west.

“It took us years to get planning permission to do anything to the garden because this house is part of the John Nash estate, built in the 1820s,” says Pilkington. “It was only when that big ash tree came down across the main road, smashing all the antique lamps on the Gloucester Gate Bridge — and nearly killing a woman with a pram — that the council finally gave us permission. I’d been telling them I feared the tree would fall and do someone harm for years.”

Unstable trees weren’t the only hurdle. At the bottom of the steeply sloping garden was a decommissioned branch of the Regent’s Canal, which used to run directly into central London until it was filled in during the second world war. (“They did it to prevent the water glinting during the bombing raids,” she says, “or so the story goes.”)

What was originally a rather gloomy canal basin has been transformed by Oxford-based landscapers Hadingham Kirk into a series of descending “rooms” full of narrative interest. French doors from the kitchen open out on to a York stone terrace populated by agapanthus in large pots, and a handsome eau de nil wrought-iron dining table for 10 from Hervé Baume in Avignon (“my husband’s a great cook and we love entertaining — in fact, we prefer it to going out”).

On the levels below, clipped box, hydrangeas and laurel hedges add structure to beds full of scented flowers and shrubs including lily of the valley, peonies, lilac, osmanthus, sarcococca and tuberose “which smells divine and we use a lot in our scents, including our new release Bukhara”. A palette of pinks, purples and whites are cut with lots of glossy dark green. A winding gravel path disappears into a backdrop of trees, increasing the sense of space.

Among Pilkington’s prize specimens is a pink pepper tree, with great big feathery leaves: “Nearly every one of our perfumes has a top note of pink pepper, it’s almost efflorescent, a bit fruity.” Pink pepper is one of the key notes in Ormonde Jayne’s other new fragrance for autumn, the softly woody Kashmir.

Pilkington claims to be the first perfumer in the world to use black hemlock, a type of fir with an aroma that’s “balsam-like, with accents of blackcurrant. Powerful, smoky, and leather,” according to the Ormonde Jayne blurb. “It has an aroma that’s both woody and green,” says Pilkington, “in perfume language it’s a chypre”.

Hemlock was a key note in her breakthrough perfume, Ormonde Woman, which she developed in partnership with the renowned “nose” Geza Schoen, who also created Escentric Molecules. So, naturally, her garden also features a hemlock shrub.

Hemlock was a key note in her breakthrough perfume, so naturally, her garden also features a hemlock shrub

Little bluebells, wild strawberries and jasmine will also eventually ramble along the original towpath wall, and there are several spots in the garden, including a wooden Lutyens bench, where one can simply sit and smell.

The Cheshire-born perfumer has lived in this part of London for more than 20 years. “I love all the greenery here, I can go for a run or walk the dog but also walk into the West End in 50 minutes.” Her first flat was on Ormonde Terrace in nearby Primrose Hill; it was here she mixed her first perfume, and named her company, combining her address with her middle name, Jayne.

When the house she now lives in came up for sale in 2011, she had already been an admirer for some years. “I thought we’d never be able to afford it. But my husband said go and have a look anyway.”

She was smitten. “But I didn’t think we’d be in with a chance. And then I went upstairs to the bathroom and noticed Ormonde Jayne bottles all round the sink and I thought: I must know this person, because that’s the kind of personal relationship we have with the clients in our boutique. And as I was leaving the house I bumped into a woman coming the other way and she cried: ‘Linda what are you doing here?’ She turned to the estate agent and said, ‘If Linda wants to buy my house I will take it off the market immediately. She is the only person who would truly understand it’.”

To cut a long, and serendipitous, story short, they completed in three weeks. “I remember standing here, in the garden, and looking at all the iconic things of London, the red buses and the black cabs going past, and thinking: how did that happen? It was a whirlwind.”

The Grade II-listed villa is one of only a few houses on the Regent’s Park estate to be designed by Nash’s chief assistant John Pennethorne (who also designed part of Somerset House) and as a result it’s something of a pretty misfit. “It has bay windows, rather than square ones, some stained glass windows too — and is a little bit more Gothic.”

Inside, though, it’s still very much a family home. While we talk, a ginger cat roams the kitchen and a radio chatters in the background; her financier husband pops in to say hello; the elder of her two teenage sons wanders in looking for a lost possession.

“My younger son, who’s 16, is a big perfume wearer,” says Pilkington. “He has been dousing himself in perfume since he was 12 and goes to school in our scents. We’re seeing a lot more teenage boys now getting into fragrance.” The entire Ormonde Jayne range — aside from Ormonde Woman, which launched in 2001 — has been genderless since 2005.

Upstairs, there’s an elegant drawing room furnished in a mix of cream upholstery and honey-coloured wood. “I like to mix expensive and cheap. These are from Zara Home,” she says, pointing out a pair of armchairs, “but I also love hunting down vintage pieces on Vinted or at auction, such as this 1920s standing lamp.” An antique tapestry salvaged from a French château hangs on one wall opposite a well-stocked cocktail cabinet.

“We love entertaining but I also just like going out into the garden in the evening and pottering around with these,” she says, showing me her Japanese Niwaki secateurs. “I sometimes wonder if we’ll go out ever again. We’re living in a little paradise.”

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