In Your Garden: Nao's south London garden

Posted on 1 Apr 2026

Gardens

In our series #GMinyourgarden, we’re peeking over the fence into gardens around the world to explore their places in our lives today. This week, Nao's south London garden.

Gardens are places where one can whimsically indulge in the object of a passion, and for me, that is the colour peach. The overuse of the word “obsession” bothers me, but when I say I’ve obsessed over this colour since we moved here nearly five years ago and I faced my first ever garden, I’m not exaggerating.

Nao in her garden by JC Candanedo

It’s hard to describe what a peach-toned flower does to my brain, but I’ll try. It fills me with the same pleasure as biting into a perfectly ripe juicy peach on a sunny, lazy day. I grow (collect?) herbaceous perennials, annuals, biennials, roses, dahlias (the national flower of Mexico, where I’m from) and bulbs in every shade of peach.

I love building colour palettes where peach is the protagonist, paired with both complements and contrasts. Peach can be elegant when paired with whites (peaches and cream!) or energetic when paired with lime greens; it can be playful paired with blues, and romantic paired with salmons.

Yes, occasionally I grow other colours, I grow food too and I co-steward this little piece of land with wildlife in mind, creating water sources, ensuring nectar for pollinators and building habitat, but the garden also holds space for my fascinations, my chaos and my experiments.