In the Garden with: Cath Kidston MBE

Earlier this month, we spent a rainy morning exploring Cath Kidston MBE’s beautifully scented greenhouses and charming home. The world inside was alive with colour and aroma—rows of pelargoniums in shades of pink, coral, and white spilled from their pots, their leaves releasing bursts of fragrance as Cath brushed past them. As we talked, she reflected on her lifelong love of gardening, the inspirations behind her creative journey, and how her fascination with scented geraniums grew into her latest venture: C. Atherley.

Best known for founding her eponymous design brand, Cath has always had a deep connection to nature, a thread that weaves through both her life and work. Her designs have long celebrated the beauty of flowers and plants, but these days, her focus is on living plants—their scent, their structure, and their presence in a home. Her latest endeavour, C. Atherley, brings that passion to life, blending her collection of scented geraniums into a line of bath and body products that captures the very essence of her greenhouses. Named after her maternal grandmother, the brand is a heartfelt nod to her family’s gardening heritage and her own love of plants.

“I go back a long way with all of this,” she said, smiling. “My first plant memory is a scented geranium outside our kitchen when I was little. You know how scent and memory are so entwined? That smell takes me straight back!”

Gardening is in Cath’s bones. “Both my grandmothers were wonderful gardeners. My mum gave my sister and me our own little patches as children—we grew radishes, carrots, marigolds, all the usual things.” But, as with many of us, life in London meant a long pause in her gardening journey. “There was a dry patch, definitely,” she admitted. “Living in flats, no outdoor space, the odd pot plant on a windowsill, maybe, but not much more.”

It was when she got her own garden that things changed. “I wouldn’t say I’m a good gardener,” she said, “but I love design and landscaping. When I left my old business, I bought myself a greenhouse as a retirement present, and that’s where I’m happiest. It’s more my space.”

It’s no surprise that flowers and plants have been a lifelong theme in her work. “People always ask if my love of florals was subconscious in my designs, but I think it was quite conscious. I’ve always loved flowers, but these days, rather than using floral materials, I’m drawn to the presence of living plants in the house. Even if it’s just a succulent on the windowsill, I like having that breathing, growing thing around.”

She gestured towards a collection of pelargoniums in the greenhouse, their leaves bursting with scent as she brushed them. “They’ve always been there in some form. At our last house, I had a long sunny hallway where I kept geraniums for years, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that I really fell into collecting them. I started ordering different varieties and learning about their extraordinary scents—rose, lemon, cedar. There’s even one that smells like Coca-Cola, which kids absolutely love.”

Geraniums—specifically pelargoniums—have since become central to her work. “I began drawing them for the prints I create, and then it grew into something more.” That ‘something more’ was her latest venture, C. Atherley, a skincare line inspired by the plants she grows.

“The idea came to me in the greenhouse,” she said. “That feeling of being surrounded by fragrance, it’s something I wanted to capture. I thought, wouldn’t it be lovely if you could bottle that moment?” She was lucky, she admitted, to have old friends in the skincare industry who could guide her through the process. But distilling the scent of a real, living plant into a product? That was a challenge.

“It takes years,” she said. “You think you can just say, ‘I want this to smell like a geranium leaf,’ but then you realise, actually, a scent has so many layers. Our first fragrance, Radens, has hints of mint, lemon, and woody geranium. When you first smell it, you get a hit of citrus, but then the deeper, more herbal notes come through. It’s about recreating that moment when you rub the leaves between your fingers and inhale.”

The greenhouse is central to it all—not just as inspiration, but as a workspace. “It’s where I experiment, where I test what I can grow, what thrives.” Cath is excited about using cloches to extend the growing season. “Salads, lettuces, and I want to start my flowers earlier—Cosmos, that kind of thing. It’s all trial and error, really.”

Over the years, she’s learned the quirks of keeping pelargoniums alive through the seasons. “They need a proper drying-out between waterings. In winter, they don’t like to be fussed over. I used to give mine little sips of water all the time—turns out, they hate that. Now I stand them in the sink once a week, let them soak, drain them out, and they seem happy.”

She’s fascinated by the way these plants travel—both physically and in stories. “I was given a geranium by a wonderful plantswoman near me in Stroud. She told me about the geranium collections in Orkney—apparently, they have a tradition of growing them on windowsills, and the story goes that a shipwreck in the 19th century washed geraniums ashore, and that’s how they spread there. I love that—plants that have been passed down through generations, shared as cuttings, carried across the world.”

We talked about how geraniums seem to be having a moment. “They’re everywhere right now—styled beautifully in living rooms, growing tall in people’s windows, wild at the side of the road in South Africa where they originally come from. There’s something about them that just brings joy.”

If you’d like to learn more about Cath’s latest venture, C. Atherley, you can visit her website here. Alternatively, if you’d prefer to immerse yourself in her beautiful geranium inspired scents and products, you can visit her shop in Connaught Place at 3 Porchester Place in Connaught Village, London, W2,