How Planning My Garden Led to My Favorite Pattern Design

Some of my best design work starts outside. This pattern, Evening Garden, grew out of something as simple as planning my garden for the season, flipping through seed catalogues, sketching flowers, thinking about what to plant and where. What started as a quiet seasonal ritual turned into the foundation for a new design.

Where It Started

The sketches came first. I was drawn to the geometric shapes hidden inside the flowers, the way petals repeat, the symmetry of leaves branching from a stem. I kept sketching, simplifying, finding the forms underneath. That process of reduction is where the pattern began to take shape, a repeating floral motif that feels both natural and structured at the same time.

Evening Garden is part of a larger collection, and that context mattered. Each pattern in the collection shares a design language, rooted in nature but shaped by geometry. This one in particular felt like it captured a specific mood, something lush and a little dramatic, a garden at dusk.

The Color Palette

The colorway came later, and it was inspired by what was literally around me. It essentially evolved, what started as something bright and airy morphed to a richer palette. Deep navy for the sky, crimson for the flowers that hold their color even as everything else fades. Rich green for the foliage, dense and layered. I wanted the palette to feel immersive, like you’re standing inside the garden rather than looking at it from a distance.

The Finished Pattern

What I love most about Evening Garden is how the repeat works. The motif tiles in a way that feels continuous and organic, like the garden just keeps going. That’s always the goal, a pattern that doesn’t feel like a pattern, just a world you can step into.