A Landscape Designer Sticks to Her Roots with a Home Makeover Featuring Shades of Green

Hadley Peterson was torn. In conceiving the palette for her family’s new home in Summit, NJ, she was drawn to two seemingly disparate schemes. On one hand, she craved light, bright rooms with white walls and upholstery—spaces that seemed to promise clarity and order.

But she also wanted dramatic hues and saturated, color-rich interiors that fit the house’s English cottage-style architecture. “I bought the house for its classic bones, so maintaining its integrity was important,” Hadley says. “I love many different styles of design, but I needed to find a thread to pull it together.”

In her garden, she installed cedar tuteurs in raised beds to support climbing roses and clematis in spring. “I love them as sculptural elements,” she says, noting they are also attractive bare or when draped in snow.

With the help of interior designer Brad Sherman of Float Studio in New York, she found that thread in a color. “Green has always been my favorite,” Hadley says. Throughout the house, the repetition of green shades “creates a rhythm,” as she puts it.

By alternating dark and light schemes from one room to the next—the smoky green living room leads directly to the bright white home office, and the intense jewel-box blue mudroom opens onto the gleaming white kitchen, for example—the house comfortably flows visually. “The juxtapositions make it work,” Sherman says.

Wallpaper created from a digital scan of a vintage postcard brings the outdoors into the dining room. The sleek lacquer table balances the rusticity of the sideboard and woven reed-and-leather Tuareg rug.

Green is at its most evocative in the formal living room. Inspired by a room she saw at Soho House in London, Hadley created a handsome, clubby space by layering complementary shades of green on the walls and in the furnishings.

Anchored by the original stone fireplace, the living room sports several shades of green—dusky walls (Farrow & Ball Green Smoke in a matte finish), a sage sofa, and hunter green velvet armchairs. The layering of tones keeps the color scheme from feeling monolithic. Golden accents—including a collection of brass candlesticks and a vintage painting found at a local antiques store—complement the green backdrop.

To the right of the hearth, the bright white office wall balances the living room’s rich scheme. In the kitchen’s dining area, open shelving offers easy access to everyday glassware and bowls. The butcher-block table is custom, but the pendants were a bargain found on Amazon.

The minimalist oak island, Danish stools, and painted floor impart a modern freshness to the kitchen, left. In a gesture toward old-fashioned English kitchens, Hadley sheathed the walls from floor to ceiling in durable, easy-to-clean subway tile.

To honor and reflect the 1929 home’s architecture, she and Sherman installed moldings and other millwork. In a nod to English manor house kitchens (“I was thinking about Gosford Park,” she confesses), they added transom windows in the passages to the mudroom and family room to highlight the structure’s historical character.

The low-back sofa in the family room keeps sight lines clear from the kitchen to the patio, making the snug room feel more spacious. Sherman had the steel coffee table custom made and contrasted it with a petrified wood side table and Louis-style armchair. “I gravitate toward old and new,” Hadley says. Even in white painted rooms, the house’s thread of green is reflected in views of the gardens. “I wanted to look out and see all green all the time,” Hadley says. 

”Most people try to hide their mudrooms, but we went bold here,” Sherman says. Vividly graphic cement floor tiles and moody blue paint (Benjamin Moore Philipsburg Blue in semigloss) create an appealing ambience. Built-in floor-to-ceiling cabinets just inside the door provide ample storage for the family of five. 

When it came to the outdoor spaces, Hadley needed no extra guidance. Determined to give her three daughters, all lacrosse players, more usable lawn, she graded the sloped backyard and added a stone retaining wall using masonry that matched that of the house.

Taking cues from the rustic English spirit of the house, she reshaped the grounds, planting boxwoods, roses, clematis, and feathery grasses in a design that wouldn’t look out of place in a Beatrix Potter book. “I always tell clients that gardens should feel like a continuation of the house,” she says. Her own home brings that philosophy to life.

A wall of ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae backs a shade-tolerant border of ferns flanked by oakleaf hydrangeas. On a raised terrace of the back lawn, a pair of globe-shaped boxwoods is set off by a trio of Westport chairs, which Hadley chose (and painted sage) after seeing similar ones at Wave Hill, a historical public garden in the Bronx. “They are super comfortable, and like the tuteurs, they are an architectural element,” she says.

Serene shades of white reign in the primary bedroom, where blush-tone accent pillows and oak night tables provide a whisper of color, and even the sconce seems to disappear into the wall. The wall sculpture, a bentwood piece by Katie Gong, represents an abstract mountain.  

An oversize paper lantern fills the vertical space in daughter Courtney’s bedroom, where the ceilings are nearly 10 feet high. The mural by artist Margie Stokley-Bronz echoes the house’s palette. Hadley spray-painted the IKEA nightstands a coordinating hue.

Shared by three daughters, this bathroom is all about functionality—and fun. Designed with maximum storage capacity, the vanity makes a bold statement in a punchy Kelly green. Outdoor light fixtures from The Home Depot illuminate the large frameless mirror.