Visiting the Quail Creek home and
garden of brad and Irma Lund is like taking a tropical vacation. The
front gardens are blooming with lush impatiens, elephant ears, sweet
potato vines, lantana, purple heart, nandinas, azaleas, hydrangeas and a
weeping cypress tree. It’s an incredibly, almost overwhelming, beautiful
display that sets the stage for a spectacular home with unmistakable
style.
The Lunds like a house to have an
interior design theme. For their previous homes in Crown Heights and
Nichols Hills, the relied on New York designer John Chadwick, formerly
of Oklahoma City, to help them create specific looks.
“First we had English Colonial, then a jazz theme, then
California contemporary. This time we wanted a tropical motif,” Irma
said. When they moved from Crown Heights to Quail Creek a year and a
half ago, they also wanted to downsize. Their son Henry was heading off
to college, presenting the couple with the opportunity for a smaller
space.
“We’re gypsies,” Irma laughed. “We like to move a lot.”
Irma grew up in Honduras, where her
mother is a college president and her father is a retired attorney. Brad
grew up in Tulsa and is now the CEO for Express Sports.
The entry to their latest home features
a backdrop wallpaper of soft varying shades of beige and taupe stripes.
The eye-catchers are the furnishings: an elegant carved console, a
beautiful mirror and silver lamps that have brass leaves, bring the lush
and luxuriant gardens inside. Parquet floors are used throughout the
main living areas in this home, which adds to its open and airy feeling.
The living room makes the most dramatic thematic
statement. Chadwick made two major suggestions for this room. First,
build a wall of bookcases to house Irma’s books. “I love to read,” she
smiles. Next, replace the windows overlooking the rear gardens and pool
with French doors, opening the house to a more efficient design. Now
guest traffic flows beautifully for the frequent entertaining the Lunds
like to do.
It is the living room’s sectional sofa and matching
draperies that relate the tropical theme so well, Chadwick used a soft
golden beige corded fabric for the back and sides of the sofa, and then
splashed the front and cushions with a lively print in white, red and
green florals.
For contrast, he placed two chairs in front of the fireplace,
upholstered in a red, green and taupe striped fabric, And on the
opposite side of the room, he upholstered a chair that had sat in
Henry’s bedroom for ten years in a leaf green and placed a tomato red
textured silk on a facing walnut chair, A textured grass cloth
basket-weave paper adorns the walls. “I think the textures John chose
for this room are wonderful,” Irma said, proclaiming this her favorite
room in the house.
While the perfect complementary fabrics
are always important to Chadwick, he also believes elegant lighting is
important in any room — so he installed a series of tiny can lights in
the living room ceiling for the proper accentuation.
The adjacent dining room, perfectly
situated for entertaining, has a dramatic oval table edged with a highly
polished burled wood and a thin oval of black outlining the inner
section. The chair seats are upholstered in off-white leather and the
backs repeat the tropical floral fabric motif of the living room. A
beautiful glass-front china cabinet adds a sparkle to the room, as does
the beautiful crystal chandelier that has moved every time the Lunds
have.
Red leather bar stools cozy up to the granite bar
overlooking the kitchen, which is quite contemporary in style. Stainless
steel appliances provide a crisp modern look and cabinet knobs were
changed out to reflect a sleeker shimmering style.
An unusual black
cabinet with gold trim houses Irma’s large selection of cookbooks. “I
love to be in the kitchen cooking because I have such a wonderful view
of the rear garden,” she said.
Brad’s favorite room is the den. “He
wanted a Frank Sinatra style in the den,” Irma said. And Chadwick
delivered. The room is anchored with a houndstooth carpet in muted grays
and blacks. The sofa and two matching chairs are in a red leather that
easily elicits a “Wow!”
A wall of bookcases for Brad’s books
includes a wine cooling refrigerator and thick glass shelves holding a
variety of crystal wine and champagne glasses. The walls are soft gray
with a textured paint. Complementing the color of the walls are two
small chests in a metallic silver that add a lot of flash to the room.
An oversize black leather ottoman does
double duty as a place to put plates of food and drinks, “Brad and Henry
spend a lot of time in here,” Irma said.
The master suite, which also opens to the pool and rear garden, is
currently a work in progress. New draperies are scheduled to arrive in a
few months and other changes are afoot in this room. “When it’s
finished, I think this will be my favorite room,” she said.
Irma considers the outdoors as another room. The rear garden is
located near the kitchen, making entertaining alfresco a simple matter,
Close to the entry to the kitchen is a small herb garden with rosemary,
thyme, sage, lavender, lemon verbena and oregano within easy reach.
The pool is flanked on the east by a wall of every variety of cedar you
can imagine. A small covered patio near the kitchen hosts an eating
area, Overlooking the pool on the north are four chaise lounges,
upholstered in subtle beige, and a grand fireplace painted soft gray. To
the south of the pool, the landscaping includes hydrangeas, trailing
roses, camellias, bromeliads, begonias and Swedish ivy.
But it is the magnificent pots, brimming with trees and flowers, that
make this garden oasis so special. A weeping willow anchors one pot by
the pool, surrounded by monkey grass, begonias and sweet potato vines.
Other pots feature crotons, hibiscus, ivy, bromeliads, pampas grass and
lantana.
Irma says the next landscaping project is the creation
of a cutting garden on the north side of the home, which previously
served as a dog run. “There’s plenty of room to do that,” she said as we
walked the space.