In every relationship, even a long and happy marriage, there is a line that cannot be crossed, and for Johnnie and Sophie Boden, it is drawn at the top of the wide stone steps rising from the terraces surrounding their country house in Dorset, southwest England. Stretching out beyond are Johnnie’s wildflower meadows, an area in which he is free to do what he pleases. But from here down is Sophie’s fiercely guarded territory, a profusion of romantically billowing shrubs and perennials.
Sophie and Johnnie Boden on a grass path through a wildflower meadow
A lush landscape of grapevine, climbing roses, wisteria, shrub roses, boxwood balls, viburnum, hardy geranium, nepeta, Alchemilla mollis, and scabious grows around a side door.
The couple, who have three grown-up daughters, bought the 500-acre estate in 2005 and come down from London for half the week; Johnnie has an office in the farmstead’s 18th-century former threshing room for his eponymous company, Boden, one of Britain’s most successful clothing brands. His first catalog was published way back in 1991 and soon came to epitomize a very exportable British lifestyle of comfortably-off folk with cheery good manners (the models never look sulky), adorable children, a love of the outdoors and jolly parties, and a penchant for zinging color. Now in his mid-60s, at an age when many of his contemporaries have retired, Johnnie shows no sign of doing so and remains Tiggerish in his enthusiasms and energies. Setting off at a cracking pace to inspect the meadows, accompanied by Janet the Welsh terrier, he admits, in the apologetic manner that a certain sort of posh Englishman speaks, “I’m pathetically driven,” as if ambition is a bad thing. His eye for fine detail that has made the business so successful applies equally here: It took ages to find just the right shade of paint for the windows and doors of the farm buildings—a bespoke Farrow & Ball mixture somewhere between the greenish-blues of Eton College (his alma mater) and the University of Cambridge (although he went to Oxford)—and each horse’s saddle in the stable’s tack room is labeled in lowercase Bauer Bodoni font at his insistence.
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