Urban Oasis

Drawing on her love of wildlife and nature, Sally Gillespie has turned her townhouse into a restful city retreat

- Serena Fokschaner

Sally Gillespie’s townhouse in London teems with wildlife. Not the real variety but the decorative. There are tapestries adorned with hummingbirds, dragonflies hover over wallpapers and birds flutter across cushions. Lights take their cue from nature, too, in the guise of antlers or branches with crystal drops that glitter like frost. On walls, tranquil landscapes paintings add to the feeling that you have stumbled out of a major city and into a secret garden.

It’s a setting that mirrors Sally’s taste and her profession as a healer at the Healing Hands Network, an organisation that looks after war survivors. ‘I wanted everything to feel fresh and restful,’ she says, ‘with my love of nature threaded throughout.