Living on the wild side

NIKKI Tibbles founded the flower shop Wild at Heart seven years ago with just enough money to buy some stock and pay a month's rent on the stall outside the now landmark Piers Gough-designed lavatories on Westbourne Grove. She has since added shops in nearby Ledbury Road, designed by fashionable and award-winning architectural practice Future Systems, and Liverpool Street's Great Eastern Hotel.

Her unlikely path to becoming a designer florist (her client list includes all of Bond Street's most fashionable emporiums) was via a degree in sports science and a previous working life in advertising accounts management.

Clad in jeans and a T-shirt, with a gamine crop of dark hair and a healthy glow, Nikki whirls through her hectic day accompanied by her two adored and irrepressible dogs, Maisey and Rosie.

Look a bit closer, though, and you'll notice those sensible loafers are in fact Prada.

Nikki asked an architect friend to create "a sense of space and light" in the Notting Hill maisonette she shares with fianc" Oliver Backhouse.

To achieve this, the first floor of the flat-fronted Victorian building was knocked into one space, with large windows at either end. The basement level also became semi-open plan, the stone staircase is all that remains of the previous interior.

A curved, beech-and-white spray-lacquered wall, extending the length of the living area, is the room's defining feature. It incorporates the kitchen, a gas fire and lots of storage and display space. "Oliver is completely non-materialistic and would prefer to have absolutely nothing," says Nikki.

"But I've kept every magazine for the past 20 years - it's all in storage."

One suspects Nikki would probably like a little more clutter. As a compromise, they have opted for selected pieces of classic 20th century furniture, including Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chairs, Arne Jacobsen's moulded plywood series 7 chairs and a Tulip table by Knoll.

The objects have a monochromatic backdrop because Nikki felt "the lack of colour highlighted their individual shapes and textures".

For her elegant floral displays at home, she uses pots by New Yorker Jonathan Adler and glass from Car-den Cunietti. Black-and- white etchings by Oliver's stepfather, Jeremy Frazer, and a flower picture by Matthew Usner-Lauder are casually displayed here, too.

On the lower floor, the sleeping area is separated from the relaxed sitting area by an oval bathroom. The curved lines, reminiscent of a set from the classic TV series Space 1999, are typical Future Systems. Unavoidable bathroom mess disappears behind sliding white-lacquer doors.

In the sitting area, which Nikki refers to as "the snuggy", fake fur cushions are often spread out over the floor for watching television, but Oliver's Charles and Ray Eames rosewood and leather lounge chair and footstool are undoubtedly the top spot.

Nikki buys lots of things for the home from other West-bourne Grove retailers. She got the original Fifties lamps from "the girls at Carden Cunietti", in nearby Westbourne Park Road, and the coloured Perspex vases by Le Plage from Space, across the road from the original flower stall.

A double-ended grey boucl" Edra bed almost fills the bedroom. It is covered in purple silk from the Space Boudoir range and an embroidered quilt by Kirsten Hechterman, also from Carden Cunietti. Nikki doesn't mind if either Rosie, who is "pure mutt" or Maisey, a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross, decide to take a nap there.

Luxurious silks and dog hairs - a classic Nikki Tibbles contradiction.

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