Pink sidalcea flowers are growing up the walls; they are in the bathroom, too, blooming over every surface—fuchsia and lilac petals curving their way upwards.
If you have a penchant for minimalist interiors, it’s probably best not to check into Thyme, a unique hideaway in Southrop in the Cotswolds. The hotel embodies the essence of maximalist countryside chic—a flamboyance of flower-print wallpapers and botanical textiles—within its honey-coloured walls.
Then again, Thyme is not your average hotel—it’s more like a tiny village with its mix-match of accommodation dotted across the bucolic 150-acre estate, including four new Cutting Garden rooms, that are the result of a collaboration with Thyme’s sister brand, Bertioli.
As you approach Thyme, passing by fields of Welsh Black Mountain sheep, and over cobblestone paths trimmed with lavender, hollyhocks and fragrant roses, it is clear that the family-run business is not just about offering guests somewhere to lay your head. As well as a noted cookery school on site, the hotel (founded by Caryn Hibbert, with daughter Milly as GM and son Charlie as head chef) offers 31 bedrooms, a restaurant carved out of a former ox barn, The Swan pub, Meadow Spa, two boutiques and even a Norman church on site.
Mainly carved out of derelict farm buildings, Caryn and her father, Michael Bertioli (a physicist and engineer), started the project by slowly restoring the buildings with conservation and sustainability as a focus. Taking some 13 years to complete, the property opened fully in 2020. Since then, Caryn and Milly have launched their lifestyle label, Bertioli. Described as a ‘sibling brand’, it offers a selection of homewares “inspired by nature that connect customers to the land.”
The latest Cutting Garden collection, which includes tablecloths, decorative accessories and a home scent, gives a nod to the flowers from the cutting garden at Thyme, and also features designs hand-drawn and painted by Caryn. The new bedrooms, found in The Farmhouse, elegantly bring the two brands together. Check in and you are transported to the glorious fields and gardens on the doorstep—captured by the wallpapers, textiles and lampshades in your room.
“The whole collection is a celebration of the cut flower gardens and aims to bring the outside in, championing the philosophy that flowers make us happy,” says Caryn. “Rooted in Thyme’s ethos that our wellbeing begins with a connection to nature, the collection consolidates the idea that in nurturing nature we nurture ourselves. The four newly refurbished bedrooms have been decorated with measured maximalism to showcase the new collection.”
Each room has its own unique design, using a variation of Cutting Garden patterns: Pink Phlox, Mixed Phlox, Elderflower and Sidalcea. The effect transports you back to a bygone era, when nature was the driving force of life—the immersive journey made more so by the fact that the room comes with its own Bertoili scent of freshly-cut flowers (from toiletries to candles and a sustainable botanical beauty bar) so it’s like waking up with your pillow in the gardens.
“I have painted a few of my favourite flowers; unashamedly boisterous, happy and wonderfully floriferous,” says Caryn. “The patterns depict flowers in their natural form, reaching for the sun, as well as in a florist’s bunch and in linear rows, as they grow in our cutting gardens. These patterns of nature, combined with their heady scents, are the very essence of an English garden.”
For guests who fall in love with the designs, the Bertioli products and fabrics are available to buy in the onsite boutique, and at stores, such as Maison Flaneur. The recreate the ultimate hotel room at home, visitors can also purchase the bespoke padded headboards made specially for the bedrooms by local furniture maker, Lorfords Contemporary. The rooms also use natural paint colours, in shades such as sage and cream, by Edward Bulmer Natural Paints, which can also be purchased from the brand’s Pimlico boutique.
If you haven’t booked one of the inventive cookery classes—which vary from ‘Canapes & Aperitifs’ to ‘Beautiful Biscuits’—there’s still plenty of options to fill your time. In fact, there’s a whole calendar of events, including breathwork workshops, yoga classes and art exhibitions in the Tithe Barn event space. Best of all, perhaps, is the chance to roam around the surrounding countryside, with guests given hand-drawn maps of routes through the Southrop Manor Estate and the surrounding idyllic land, complete with burbling streams and wild flower meadows.
Thoughtfulness is at the heart of Thyme. As well as complimentary larders stocked with goodies, guests are also greeted with an in-room trug filled with home-made cookies, cheese straws and a negroni mix. There are bicycles to hire, private floristry or painting lessons to book and, of course, when it comes time to relax, luxury Bertioli products to soak off the day (in evocative Victorian-style tubs with glorious views of the land).
For dining, there are informal meals at The Swan pub, or you can head to the 19th century Ox Barn for chef Charlie Hibbert’s exciting menu featuring locally-sourced produce with a dollop of Italian flair: start with ‘Stracciatella, Prosciutto, Mmelon and Honey’ or ‘White Asparagus, Sauce Mousseline and Parmesan’; for mains, there’s ‘Skate in Black Butter, Capers and Shrimp’ or silky ‘Tagliatelle with Artichoke’. Desserts include ‘Polenta Cake and Blood Orange or ‘Rhubarb Syllabub’—the simple descriptions belie the delicious complexity and utter unctuousness of each dish.
“Thyme started as a restoration project with my father, to breathe new life into these dilapidated agricultural buildings,” says Caryn. “As we roll Bertioli out across Thyme, we hope to further instil the connection to the land through the interior decoration and the experiences on offer. With this collection, guests can also take a piece of Thyme home, decorating rooms and tables with patterns, enhanced with scents, which are emblematic of the gardens and wild spaces here at Thyme. It is a coming together of everything we have created over the years. It’s the next chapter in our story, it’s what we call the colouring in.”