CF Green Designs

Chiara grew up in Rome, Italy, but her passion for 'everything garden' developed when she moved to the UK in 1997 with her family.

 

Britain is famous for having created, over the centuries, a great variety of beautiful gardens; so she had plenty of opportunities to be inspired and learn from real-life ones going beyond books, TV programs, visiting nurseries and public gardens.

 

The world-wide famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show, held by the Royal Horticultural Society every May in London, opened her eyes to a new world of amazing things that can be achieved in one's garden, even tiny ones. Public gardens and large estate gardens are beautiful to look at and enjoy for the day, but one rarely realizes that one can have the same enjoyment in a private garden: this was really the motivation to want her help other people creating their own dream garden.

 

So after a few years of creating and innovating in her own garden and while working full time as an IT software designer, she enrolled at the Open Learning Diploma in Garden Design at the KLC School of Design in London with the vision of a future helping people realize their dreams.

When in 2010 she moved to California, and after several years of informally helping friends in designing and creating their own gardens, she took the opportunity to make her vision become reality and started CF Green Designs.

 

Chiara loves designing gardens that feel like an extension of the house and that reflect the client's desires in a beautiful and functional way: she is very keen on Mediterranean gardens, reflecting her Italian aesthetics and sensitivities, but she also loves the lushness of the British gardens.

She combines the two in her personal style characterized by an abundance of lush greens in contrasting textures and forms and by a restrained use of color, limited to a narrow, but powerful palette.

 

Chiara is also a firm believer in water-wise gardening; more recently, she has been spending a lot of time getting to know better California native plants so she can mix them with other Mediterranean plants, not only creating a more interesting palette of plants, but also attracting more wildlife.

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