Garden Diaries: Step Inside Shea McGee's Dream Garden, Where Hydrangeas, Homegrown Vegetables and Creativity Grow Side by Side
For the founder of Studio McGee, the garden isn't separate from her design practice – it's an extension of it
Before Shea McGee moved into her home, she had a very specific dream: hydrangeas. Planted en masse and lining the front of the house in abundance. For someone whose entire creative life is built on translating vision into reality, this was never going to be just a passing thought.
Nearly seven years ago, when the interior designer and her family moved into their home, there was no established garden. Just potential. Shea, who describes herself as 'not a gardener' when she started, began creating the space from scratch. She approached it the way she approaches everything: with intention, restraint, and an eye for how the garden could become an extension of her interior design aesthetic.
Today, those hydrangeas (hydrangea paniculata 'limelight', to be precise) – that took six years to establish their current magnificent scale – line the front of her home just as she'd imagined. But they're only part of a much larger story about how a tastemaker's garden can become a laboratory for creativity, and a daily practice in understanding that a garden, like design itself, is always evolving.
Hydrangeas And What They Taught Me
When we moved into our home, I literally dreamed about having hydrangeas in front of it. They bloom in late summer, so I wait all year, and when they finally pop, they just kind of overtake our house.
Every single year when those flowers finally come, that gratification doesn't get old. And I think it's because I held that vision for so long before I actually had it. I knew exactly what I wanted, and now that it's here, it feels so fulfilling every single year that they bloom.
It took six years for them to reach the scale they're at now. Six years of patience, which is interesting because I'm naturally impatient, especially as a designer. I want things to look beautiful right away.
Now I have hydrangeas lining the front of our home, and I also have them in a small area in the back against our mudroom. They get so big they actually start to cover our windows, and I don't even care. I love it so much. Then I go out and just clip mounds of them.
This past year I dried some of the hydrangea stems and put them in our Christmas tree. I love that antique pink color they turn at the end of the season.
Creating A Garden From Scratch
When we built this home, I wasn't a gardener, but I had a lot of aspirations to become one. I loved the process of learning.
When we first moved in, I created the garden from scratch. I like a restrained palette: greens and whites, and lavenders. That really informed my planting decisions, as well as wanting the hydrangeas, roses and lavender that I clip from regularly.
As an interior designer, I'm always thinking about how the garden works with my home. I want to be inside and look out and feel like it's an extension of my style on the interiors. But also, I love hosting, and I want fresh flowers around my home. So those planting decisions were largely informed around what would be a natural fit in the interior design.
That first year of gardening, I was very nervous. Something about gardening feels intimidating when you don't know what you're doing. But once I just started, I realized I'm going to make mistakes and I'm also going to have beautiful discoveries every single year.
I think a lot of people hesitate to start a garden because they're afraid of failure. And that fear held me back when I was first getting into interior design as well. But then the exact same thing happened in both cases: I just started, I learned, and I became comfortable with the idea that it's okay for something not to work out.
The Designer's Approach
Because I'm impatient and I want something to look beautiful right away, I have a strategy.
When I'm planting my garden beds, I line all of them with little flowers; insect-repelling plants that look beautiful, such as petunias, things that are good right out of the gate.
That gives me that immediate visual impact I'm craving while I'm waiting for everything else to establish. It was wonderful to have a beautiful flower border trailing and spilling over from the very beginning.
Even the colors I choose carry my design aesthetic into the garden. If I'm going to do a marigold, I'm not choosing the vibrant orange. I'm choosing a soft yellow because that's my natural palette, and what I'm drawn to.
I do this on purpose now, but even when I wasn't thinking about it consciously, I was selecting colors and plants that felt aligned with my interior design sensibility.
However, when it comes to the actual vegetables in my kitchen garden, I'm not selecting based on color or design. I'm selecting based on what I actually want to eat and what I can use in my cooking.
The Kitchen Garden Inspiration
I knew I wanted to try my hand at growing food, so I built some raised garden beds, and that was the start. That first year I just went for it.
Now there's a clear path from my kitchen out to that garden. I really enjoy cooking, and I garnish everything with herbs. So herbs and vegetables live in that space, and they're constantly being used.
My new cookbook, Around The Table, available from Amazon, is deeply connected to what I grow. When I was approaching the book, I had a lot of discoveries about myself and how I like to cook. I realized that a lot of it is an extension of how I approach design.
There's something so special about being able to go out and snip fresh herbs and add them into salads. One of my favorite recipes in the book is a garden couscous salad just filled with dill and all sorts of fresh herbs from the garden.
But I also got creative with what I could grow and make. I have a bay leaf cheesecake recipe in the book, where I blend up the bay leaves into a really fine powder and sprinkle it throughout. It's herbaceous but sweet; a totally different way of thinking about a dessert.
Family Time In The Garden
We all have different jobs in the garden, different things we're paying attention to, but what I love most is that we're just occupying a space together outside.
My four-year-old spends the most time with me. She toddles around, loves to find the bugs and the earthworms and the snails and slugs. She's curious about all of it. She spends a lot of time just at my heels.
My older children approach it differently. They'll say, 'This is my cucumber', or 'this is my tomato'. They claim plants. They want to check on that one specific plant, and they take great care of it. They love to harvest, even if it means picking carrots way before they're ready. We end up with these tiny baby carrots, but they taste delicious.
What I love about our time in the garden as a family is that everyone's hands are busy, so there are no screens, no phones. You're just together. And something about being in nature; everyone's nervous system just relaxes and calms down.
With our busy lives, I think we all crave that feeling of being next to the earth, even if we don't realize it at the time. When we come back inside, there's been a little reset.
What The Garden Teaches The Designer
The garden mirrors a lot about what I've learned in interior design. It's taught me that you're constantly evolving. I can stay true to my favorite things in my design aesthetic at my core, but that continues to evolve.
Every year I'm trying a new plant, and I learn things and file them away for later. And I do that with every single project that I undertake as a designer. The garden is that for me, too.
I had hesitation about starting a garden because I was nervous I would fail. And that was something that held me back when I was first starting to get into interior design as well. But I just started and learned. You get comfortable with the idea that it's okay for something not to work out. And there's pride that comes from what does work, and you get to enjoy it.
I'd say to anyone wanting to get their garden started: it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't need to research every single thing. Just go and you'll find out really quickly what your garden needs. It's such a work in progress.
When you plant something, it's going to look way different in a year's time. A garden evolves, just like a home evolves as people grow within it.
Shop Our Shea McGee-Inspired Garden Edit
Shea's favorite limelight hydrangeas flower profusely once established, and are a wonderful cut stem bring into the home, fresh or dried.
To carry all her tools around the garden Shea prefers a beautiful hand-held caddy over a wearable toolbelt.
Shea McGee's debut cookbook is a beautiful fusion of her design expertise and culinary passions.
A good pair of clippers is always needed if you are growing flowers and foliage to snip and bring into your home.
A bay tree makes a stylish, ornamental addition to a patio or kitchen garden, and the leaves can be used in many dishes.
Long gardening gloves are an essential for Shea, who has a lot of roses. When they need deadheading, these gloves protect her from getting scratched by thorns.
Garden Diaries is our series where we share inspiring stories of designing and cultivating a stunning garden space. We explore how creatives, designers and tastemakers have grown a deeply personal space, inviting creativity, learning and happiness in their gardens, and how they live in these spaces.
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