Cultivating Home Amidst a Large, Lush West Village Garden

Welcome to House Calls, a recurring feature in which Curbed tours New Yorkers' lovely, offbeat, or otherwise awesome homes. Think your space should be featured next? Drop us a line.

By her accounts, Sierra Tishgart's West Village garden is nothing short of whimsical. "Sometimes at night, I can hear my neighbor's bull frog," Tishgart says with a smile while standing on her patio on a July afternoon, moments after the sun appeared for the first time in days from behind a cloak of heavy clouds, "Sometimes," she begins incredulously, "I hear someone playing the piccolo." To be clear, this is not the norm for New York City, but with one look around her private 1,000-square-foot garden, and towards the whitewashed rear of the quaint West Village apartment building she calls home, Tishgart's recounts are easy to believe . A weeping willow tree hangs over a neighboring garden; flowers bloom lushly and a bit haphazardly from a patch of dirt Tishgart's been tending to since she moved in a little over a month ago. For a girl whose furnishings could be the envy of any casual collector, the spunky patch of mismatched flowers is Tishgart's pride and joy. Since moving in, she's been cultivating her green thumb, conferencing with elder neighbors about gardening tips and tricks, and of course, showing her work off to friends.

Tishgart, a sprightly 20-something writer for New York Magazine's Grub Street, says an outdoor space was one of the most important things to her when packing up and leaving behind a former grim landlord situation elsewhere in the Village. She knew she found home when her StreetEasy search brought her to the month-old rental that she had overlooked time and time again. Because of its extended stay on the market, she was able to nab it at a bit of a better price.

Since moving in, Tishgart's scoured Craigslist for furniture to pad the apartment's much larger outdoor space. She's scored a deep white-cushioned outdoor couch that she moved alone by way of Uber SUV. A hot pink dining set propped under her bedroom windows is also a recent acquisition. The chairs around her outdoor dining table are a bit more showy; they're Kartell.

Inside, Tishgart's home is prim and polished with big-name furniture and artifacts that relay her effervescence. Tishgart says she has a penchant for midcentury stuff—as do many these days—and that shows up in the molded plastic Eames chair she found through Instagram and the light-burst lamp from Restoration Hardware that stands in the corner. Tishgart also loves collecting pieces she gravitates towards, even if she thinks they don't make sense with her aesthetic at large. "This sleigh chair is kind of nutty," she says of the lumbering leather-bound piece positioned under the window in her living room, "I'm not even sure if it works in the apartment but I will have that forever."

· House Calls archives [Curbed]