Scrolling through the ‘before’ pictures of William Bracewell’s east London flat, shared with his partner Andy, is enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who has renovated a Victorian terrace. Uncomfortably 1970s, uncontrollably crumbling, featuring rodent-sized holes in the floor, the one-bed, one-bath property was in need of some serious new choreography. But the limitations in square footage built helpful walls on the ambitions of our renovators. The scale of the garden, however – all 150 feet of it – would have toppled the enthusiasm of even the most gung-ho gardener. A bit like those lengthy untameable plots that stretch out behind student shared houses, William’s garden was filled with impressive but one-dimensional shrubs, clearly once beloved by the prior owner, but in need of new thought and tenderness. The process of redevelopment was… character building, but now, after a few short years, the garden is a surprisingly mature and elegantly planted patch of inner-London that feels closer in tone to the owner’s suburban upbringing, and its careful maintenance provides a form of therapy for the pair who tend it.
In 2022, William was the first Welsh person to be given the prestigious role of Principal for the Royal Ballet in London, an achievement he credits to his discipline, imagination and a lifetime of preparation. His childhood on the outskirts of Swansea was an idyllic mix of creative activities and time in nature. His mother was a Welsh teacher, and his father a landscape gardener who had a small nursery at the back of the garden; no doubt a key influence. ‘My eldest sister is a professional musician, and the other paints, so interestingly we’ve all still got a real passion for artistic pursuits, but life was quite suburban. We spent a lot of time by the stunning South Wales coast, so I surfed from a young age with my dad, and we would do day family trips to waterfalls.’
William first got into ballet through a friend at school who recommended he join her at a class. ‘Honestly, initially I wasn’t keen, but I think the teacher was so eager to have more boys in the class, and I was the only one. Completely honestly, I think I quite liked the attention that I got. And my mum enjoyed that I came home tired, so I didn’t ruin the house with all of my energy.’
As many dancers in the UK will know, there’s an anxious moment at the tender age of 11 when, after auditions, the country’s most promising young dancers are propelled into White Lodge, an imposing Georgian boarding school in Richmond Park, to attend the Royal Ballet School. ‘It was quite a strange place for a small boy to grow up,’ says William. ‘At the time, I didn't tell anyone that I was going to ballet classes. I was nervous about maybe being bullied for it. I do regret that, though, because when people found out that I was going to the Royal Ballet at 11, I had nothing but incredible support and admiration, and my friends were sad that I wasn’t going to join them at the comprehensive school.’
Since then, with very few breaks, his life as a leading dancer has pirouetted impressively onwards, in cramped flats in city centres near to theatres, on tour buses around the UK, and on stages curtained by ‘terror and addictive thrill in equal measure’ – a million miles from the waterfalls and surf of his early childhood. Nine-hour rehearsals, stretch, pointe, throw, catch, attitude, assemblé, showtime. It’s a dream life, but a punishing one. ‘There is a part of me that does always yearn to be somewhere more green and find the peace and quiet.’
Now, William has had the opportunity to bring just a taste of his wilds of his homeland into his own backyard, and he credits his London garden as giving him a welcome reprieve from the burdens, both mental and physical, of his profession. ‘There’s an interesting kind of catharsis in the routine of gardening. Some days, I use the garden as a form of exercise and a form of training. And then other days, I almost use it as a form of meditation and I don’t necessarily think so much about what my body’s doing.’
There were some real gems, like a gorgeous rosebush, which the couple kept from the previous owner, but most of the planting is experimental and new. ‘If you think about wildlife, I think what they need is variation. We just filled it with as many different types of plants that we loved, which initially was very much not what I wanted to do. I was more keen on finding a very simple, cohesive kind of look to the garden, but the more I discussed it with Andy, the more we realised we don’t know what a lot of these plants look like in real life. We don't know how they grow, we don't know their textures and we want to see them for ourselves, which has meant that we’ve got this amazing garden developing quite organically.’ They credit Sarah Price, Piet Oudolf and Dan Pearson as key influences.
William and Andy’s garden reads like the unpolished put powerful first draft of a romantic novel; wild and raw, ready to fine-tuned, preened and pored over, for years to come. Cyclically, Andy is a florist (he retrained during lockdown when work for dancers dried up), and takes buckets of cuttings to create his displays in a specially built shed at the end of the garden path. ‘I find that Andy’s work gives my gardening real purpose because it provides him with his material to create.’ The same could be said for William himself.
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