My Home: Philippa Holland, jeweller

Philippa Holland is a jewellery designer, with clients including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kylie Minogue, Claudia Schiffer and Sienna Miller. Her work is stocked in boutiques such as Browns, on South Molton Street, and at www.philippaholland.co.uk. She lives and works in Notting Hill, west London.

This house, which belonged to my parents, was very old-fashioned inside when I first moved into it. I was 21, and had returned from travelling around Indonesia and Central America. I completely transformed it, stripping off the patterned wallpaper and all the dowdy green carpets.

It was full of my great- aunt's and grandparents' furniture. Now it has more of an eclectic feel. Many pieces I had shipped over from Indonesia; there's a cowhide from Argentina on the sitting-room floor; and the driftwood mirrors, Buddhist sculptures, and paintings from the Kama Sutra I bought in Kerala.

For a while, my best friend Savannah Miller [sister of Sienna] stayed here with her husband, and he painted it throughout with the most beautiful off-white organic paint and put up shelves made from chunks of oak they found around the woodlands of Devon.

I have a day-bed in the sitting-room that I got shipped over from Bali - it actually cost more to ship than it did to buy - and I tend to use it as a large sofa. My friends and I like to chill out on it, listening to music.

My office is on the other side of the room, with the desk overlooking the garden so there's a good deal of light. That's where I have my computer and do my jewellery designs. When you live and work in the same place, it's important to keep things in order, and you have to be able to switch from work mode to home mode. My home is an integral part of my business, and I have held a few jewellery house sales, which have been a great success. In your own home, you can be a lot more relaxed: if people don't want to buy something, it's fine. I often serve wine, sometimes champagne, and snacks, so it's more like having friends round for a party.

I am very close to Holland Park and Kensington Gardens, which is great for walking my dog Zola and getting my morning hit of fresh air. Another thing I like about living in this area is that all the houses around me are painted in different bright colours. It makes you feel happy - London can be so grey at times.

Leading off from my office is the kitchen, which is painted with huge red poppies by another friend who stayed here, a Belgian artist called Eleonore de Liedekerke. I'm not great at cooking, but I do love having friends round for cosy suppers. There's a great deli called Clarke's nearby, or I get a pie made specially at The Fish Shop at Kensington Place.

Upstairs, there's a spare room, and my bedroom, which is my favourite part of the whole house. I've covered what was an ordinary double bed with a Balinese canopy, so it looks rather like a four-poster. And I've hung a beautiful gold lace dress over one of the cupboards. It's been in my family for years, and I've never worn it, but it is amazing just to look at.

I have hyacinths growing in a pot beside my bed. I adore them, they're full of such promise - the smell of spring. I also love fig-scented candles by Diptyque, and all kinds of fresh flowers. Next to my bedroom is a small bathroom, which, funnily enough, overlooks Norman Lamont's study.

There are very few drawbacks to living here, though I am not particularly fond of some of the shopping streets in Notting Hill - they're so homogeneous, full of places you just wouldn't want, like Tesco and McDonald's. It's a shame as this is such a funky area.

I love crystals and stones and believe that they have wonderful healing powers. I have a huge chunk of obsidian that sits on a chest of drawers opposite my bed. I bought it in Java as it is supposed to absorb negative energy and send out good vibrations. I have a huge amethyst crystal next to the fireplace in the sitting room. It is on a kind of permanent loan from my boyfriend George, who is a trance DJ. I also have several large quartz crystals that were programmed by my Buddhist meditation teacher.

I first discovered my love of esoteric practises when I went to study yoga in India when I was 18. At 21, I started going on silent retreats and yoga holidays. I try to go on a silent retreat at least once a year, or when I feel I have been in the city too long or living in a very stressful environment.

I was brought up near Stonehenge, and the ancient mythology and folklore of the countryside there has had a big influence on my jewellery design. I am also greatly inspired by the work of the fairy-tale illustrator Arthur Rackham. I always loved fairies as a child, and I love the way fairy tales become more appropriate as you grow older - you can tune into different meanings within them. I also adore the way Rackham portrays the countryside as the wild, lost England that tends to be forgotten now. We don't always see it as we race through it in cars or trains, and rarely stop to venture into the deepest, darkest forests. It is that spirit of old England that inspires me the most.

I'm as green as I possibly can be. I recycle everything and make sure I turn things off and don't fill up the bath. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, which I saw last year, really made me sit up and take notice. One of the best things we can do at the moment is to plant trees - every year for the last three years I have been going to Cornwall to plant oak, beech and hawthorn trees. But until we all generate our own power, whether solar, wind or whatever, we can't really say we're green enough.

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