Under the Tent of Peacock Park

When Gina Galvin, of Peacock Park Design, longs for an adventure, she packs all her hopes and dreams into an old-fashioned wicker picnic basket and pitches a tent. There, beneath the twinkling light of the stars, she uses her imagination –and a collection of props–to create the perfect home away from home, right in her own backyard. 

 
Although she resides in a magnificent manor house, entrepreneur Gina Galvin feels most at home beneath the creamy beige eaves of the canvas tent she has erected on the grounds of her 130-acre estate in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Inside, she has created a fanciful environment adorned with rare antiques, flea-market finds, vintage photographs, and treasures from her own Peacock Park Design collection.

 
The furnishings, a mix of old and new, make the outdoors a luxurious living space, where simple tasks such as hanging laundry on a line become pure pleasures.

 
Biology slides line the drawers, birds’ nests perch in cubbies and well-worn leather suitcases serve as makeshift tables. “I love to create vignettes of life,” the entrepreneur says. “It’s not so much about money; it’s about making my imagination come alive.”

 
Gina searched antique shops, flea markets, and the products in her own collection for treasures and trinkets to furnish the two-room tent. The resulting style, which she describes as “affordable opulence for gracious living,” starts with her own crowning touch–the butterscotch canvas ceiling decorated with black-and-silver fleurs-de-lis.

 
To learn more about Gina’s enchanting retreat, see “Under the Big Top: The Tent of Peacock Park,” on page 56 of the September/October 2011 issue of Victoria magazine.