Interior designer Todd Romano’s eclectic style makes all kinds of flowers feel at home.
flower: Todd, I’m so glad to have you as our inaugural Outside In subject. Would you share with us your design background and inspirations?
Todd Romano: I grew up in a household where architecture, design, antiques, collecting, and gardening were the paramount interests. My father is very much a frustrated architect, and on his side of the family I come from a long line of Italian engineers and builders. From my mother, I got the great interest in art, travel, decoration, antiques, and gardening. At the time I went to university, architecture seemed the natural thing to study…that is until I found out that I didn’t really care how a building would stand up, but rather how it looked.
The great domestic architecture of my hometown was an early visual inspiration and that, combined with my parents’ interests and books, certainly lit the fire! As a small boy, I remember going through my parents’ issues of Country Life, House Beautiful, House & Garden, and, the first design book I ever saw, Billy Baldwin Decorates. I was 11 when my mother brought that book home, so you see I started rather early.
“I adore tulips,” explains Romano. “They’re like buying a box of paints; you can find them in all colors. You match them with your color scheme like the perfect color bag for your dress.” This Southampton summer cottage graced the cover ofElle Décor. (Photograph of daisies below the mirror is by Peter Dayton.)
“I adore tulips,” explains Romano. “They’re like buying a box of paints; you can find them in all colors. You match them with your color scheme like the perfect color bag for your dress.” This Southampton summer cottage graced the cover of Elle Décor. (Photograph of daisies below the mirror is by Peter Dayton.)
What is your first floral recollection?
That’s easy: planting bulbs with my Gran, my mother’s mother, in the backyard of our house in Olmos Park, San Antonio. She loved to garden and loved flowers.
So you learned the fine art of planting from your Gran, what were other floral influences?
My mother and grandmother were/are great gardeners and their love of nature and plants was very much passed on to me. My mother’s big passion has been camellias (no small feat in South Texas!) and old European roses. My father was also interested in gardening and landscape design, but more in a Jeffersonian way, in that he loved to map out or draw new flower beds, walkways, patios (terraces) and all that sort of stuff. It’s hard to keep Italians from building, laying stone, and planting gardens! So, I guess you could say it’s very much a family affair.
For this neutral and chocolate-toned bachelor’s apartment, the designer brought in a punch of color and soft texture by filling the 19th century cast iron urn (found at a local antique fair) with lilac branches.
In all of your work that we’ve seen published, there are flowers in almost every space/room.
To me, there is no greater luxury than being surrounded by beautiful and fragrant flowers and plants. It is what truly finishes and completes a room. I love everything from cut flowers from your garden (or the corner deli), potted orchids, or topiaries, forced bulbs (paper whites or hyacinths) to cut branches (think dogwood or forsythia). They just give rooms a sense of being and life that is very hard to replicate otherwise. And especially for those of us living in apartments in urban cities. It is essential to reconnect with nature somehow—and to me, this is the best way.
Discover Todd Romano’s go-to container choices and how to select the correct container for the occasion in our Summer 2010 issue.
