Once kindled, her ingenuity knew no bounds. When unleashed, she could find any excuse to rescue a tarnished tidbit from slipping into oblivion. The result could be boggling, but a common theme unifies her collecting sprees. Nature and gardening run as a thread throughout her country cottage, with greenery (both live and faux) weaving all her finds together. That’s how the boundaries were erased to bring all the romance of the garden by her side, no matter where she happens to be.
Now, Paula wakes up in the morning to the sense of green wandering into her room thanks to faux ivy draped over the bed frame and trailing around the salvaged vine curtain rods. When she turns off the light at night, she brushes beyond a frond on her table. Of course, there is an ulterior design dictum behind her methods. “I love white,” she says of the bright rooms she has painted, “but it looks too stark without green.” The ploy is mutually beneficial because the crisp, airy white backdrop lends an outdoorsy freshness to the entire scene. As a result, all of Paula’s spaces are highly articulate, and she can feed into her collections to her heart’s content without creating a jumble. She loves birds and everything about them, so feathered references are tucked everywhere. Fascinated by old tools, sewing supplies and garden implements are evidenced wherever she turns. With every cranny featuring a different chapter in the odyssey of her interaction with style, nature, and the earth, Paula’s country cottage lost its walls and became a nest.
