Enjoy Quaint English Cottage Life in Oak Cliff, Complete With a Gorgeous Garden

Cottage-core lovers — sit up and take note. Your English Tudor cottage with a secret garden is for sale.

This home is routinely the talk of the neighborhood — dubbed the Garden House — and there are plenty of reasons why this Oak Cliff home is getting noticed. The owner has been there for quite some time and he’s filled this incredible home with an impressive collection of books and vintage furniture.

It’s cozy, it’s a cottage, and it’s such a homey home.

Let’s talk about that garden.

Not only is it incredibly impressive – everyone comments on it – it’s also a non-stop food supply for the beehive out back. That’s right, there’s a beehive that the owner has maintained and will continue to provide one year of maintenance for the next owner. Compass listing agent Jenni Stolarski said she’s been on the receiving end of the homegrown honey and it’s amazing.

The owner also added that there are three “ancient” pecan trees on the property as well as an “incredibly rich and diverse landscape, including flowering shrubs, evergreen shrubs and trees, a mini-food forest with over 20 fruit and berry trees (specifically selected for this region of Texas), muscadine grape vines (the best for our region), figs, pomegranates, several varieties of thornless blackberry, strawberries, vegetables, native and well-adapted perennials and bulbs, and self-sowing edible greens and flowers. The landscape is self-perpetuating, with something in bloom and edible to be had any time of the year.”

Though the garden is a head-turner, inside, this home is equally verdant and beautiful.

We were super curious about this home (we’re nosy!) so we had to pick seller Robert Edwards’ brain:

There are some amazing antiques in your home. Are you a collector? Any particular story you’d like to share about these pieces?

I am a huge history enthusiast as well as a classical pianist so am constantly inspired by aesthetics of the past. This house was among those designed and built just after World War I, when many Americans travelled overseas and returned with European-inspired ideas they were eager to recreate here at home. This house was designed to appear rather ancient, from the rough stucco finish and old world arches to the exposed brick patches, designed to appear as if parts of the stucco had fallen away from the vicissitudes of time. I’ve taken the architect’s lead and styled it into an English cottage, with period gothic-style antiques as well as many family heirlooms. While several pieces are specifically British in origin, I enjoy an eclecticism in my furnishings so I include Art Deco and other styles prevalent in 1924, the year the house was built. I enjoy the look and feel of furnishings which were crafted with more care than is common today, each of which have their own unique histories. I tend to lean toward pieces which might have been chosen by the very first owners of this home.

The garden is amazing and feels like a place out of a fairytale. What went into this labor of love?

You can’t have an English cottage without an English cottage garden! The Texas twist to my gardens is that they’re planted in raised beds, which allows the gardener to avoid our sticky clay soil. The beds feature the same rustic, exposed-brick style as the house and are filled with perfect garden soil. This not only help the plants thrive but makes gardening much easier as one can be comfortably seated while working in the beds. Like a good English cottage garden, it contains fruits, berries, vegetables and herbs among the flowers, so that there’s something to eat and something blooming at all times of the year. There’s a working bee hive in the back yard to help with pollination and each year, if the bees have enough to share, I get a delicious harvest of honey! It is always entertaining to watch the busy bees as well as all the butterflies, hummingbirds, beneficial lizards, and other friendly garden inhabitants work and frolic. 

What would you call your design aesthetic? We love the details!

As I’m such a history buff, and am often practicing or listening to historic music, so I feel very much at home in a vintage setting. An older home just feels more stable to me somehow. This house is very solidly built, with heavy terra-cotta block core and wood lath covered by horsehair-infused plaster. I love the fact that horses were still in common use when this house was built (I once unearthed an old horseshoe in the floor of my garage, indicating it may have housed a horse at one time) and that their hair was used to strengthen the plaster in the walls around me. Whenever I’ve done any remodeling or repairs I have always researched what might have been done in the 1920s, attempting to preserve the integrity of style and period while adding the necessary modern amenities. I hope this house will exist for many more years to come, giving new owners as much joy and comfort as I’ve experienced here. 

If you’re not sold on this charmer, consider the neighborhood — Kessler Square — which is lined with massive trees and well-maintained 1920s homes. Then there’s the front door that was that custom made. And the stained glass that the owner and his father personally created.

Thoughtful, period details are located throughout the two-bedroom, one-bath, 1,580-square foot English cottage at 1019 N. Edgefield Drive, which is listed for $499,000.