COMING UP ROSES

Whitney Hawkings, florist to the stars, opens the doors to her stunning six-storey home on the River Thames

When the style set’s go-to florist Whitney Hawkings and her husband, fashion designer Peter, were ambitious young twenty-somethings, they used to stroll through London’s Chelsea and look wistfully at a beautiful Georgian townhouse, daydreaming that they would one day live in one just like it.

More than 20 years later, the couple have fulfilled that dream. But rather than finding a home similar to the one they had liked so much, overlooking the River Thames and Battersea Bridge, they are now the proud owners of the very same six-storey property they once admired.

“We walked past it so many times when we were young and just married, saying: ‘Oh my god. What would it be like to live in that house?’” Whitney tells hello! in this exclusive interview.

“When Peter and I sat down a couple of years ago to figure out what our dream house would look like, he said: ‘Do you remember that house we saw years and years ago?’ And then I found that it was for sale. Now, I wake up every morning and think: ‘How did I get here?’ I can’t believe how lucky we are.”