Coinciding with the Frida Kahlo exhibition at London’s V&A this summer, the Medici Gallery card and gift store in South Kensington, located very close to the museum, has given its window as well as its back garden a colourful makeover.
Tim Reynolds, the shop manager certainly went to great lengths (literally) to create the new look back garden – further testament to his winning Best Retail Employee in The Retas last year.
Taking the decision to ‘go for it’, Tim admits that it was not an overnight quick fix!
“I began by carrying four pieces of decking each day from my home in Tottenham Hale on the London Underground to the shop in South Ken. Luckily they were just under the Tube’s height restrictions regulations. Charlie [Wheatley, assistant manager] has painted the decking a stunning deep red and I bought a gorgeous blue paint from Designers Guild for the shop’s garden walls and a wonderful bright pink for the bench – which we wheeled from Homebase past the Natural History Museum. And we’ve even got a real tree with plastic lemons, cherries and oranges dangling from it. Bit by bit we are finally completing our garden plan,” says Tim.
With the V&A’s Frida Kahlo exhibition opening recently the shop garden’s colourful restoration ties-in nicely, as the shop is located just a few minutes away from it.
“Customers can see the new garden through a window and it allows us to showcase all the lovely Frida Kahlo partywear from Talking Tables, prints and cards from Eastend Prints, the trend for llamas and cacti and the cards I bought recently from Tattersfield Designs at PG Live.”
