I am here to talk about the gardens which surround the entire house, but Conran surprises me with some personal news that has somehow escaped the attention of the gossip columnists: her second marriage, to the American financier Nicholas Hofgren, whom she married in 2010, has ended. And ended some time ago.
“In 2020, just as the country was feeling the full force of Covid, I got very sick. I had sepsis, after developing a gangrenous gall bladder. On top of all that, I nearly lost my business. Then my marriage broke up. Then my father died.”
Conran, whose tableware and furniture is stocked by high-street giants John Lewis, Next and Dunelm, was previously married to designer Alex Wilcock, with whom she shares two children, Felix and Coco. Her wedding to Hofgren took place in Bermuda.
Since the split, she says, she has given up her much-loved London flat and moved to Salthrop full time. It may have felt like the move had come at the wrong time, but it was the opposite.
“Once I started getting better, the garden was waiting to lure me out, giving me things to look at, to smell, to grow. I became absorbed in it all, I was practically living out there. I put my heart and soul into it, and in return, it was untangling me, it was allowing me to let so much stuff float away.
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