Anna's Flower Farm

30/01/2025

Some of January bought inside this month. Forced Muscari ´babies breath’, with nice long stems because our house is dark! Then Amaryllis ´papilio & emerald’ which has got so big that I have had to fashion a hazel pea stick framework for it and my absolute favourite scent, Sarcoccoca humilis which is still delighting me when I put the food waste out in the compost bin by the back door. Every garden should have one to remind you to step outside this month. And it lasts ages in the vase.

08/01/2025

Whilst we all know the real new year is in March 😉 I like the opportunity to start again whenever I can get it. This months on my in/out list for 2025 and gardening resolutions. Have you made any?

05/01/2025

I’m planning some more shrub planting this winter and in collating a list, inadvertently made a top twelve for twelfth night! Link is in my stories for all the reasons why growing shrubs is essential for a cutting hardening. As if you didn’t already know.

31/12/2024

Still hibernating somewhere in twixmas land. I’m writing My less/more list, planning goals for the year and how I’m going to achieve them.

Weather looks cold this weekend so I need to get out later this week. I’m planting the last of the bulbs, cover tender plants and finish pricking out.

Then I’ll be back inside to start planning crop lists.

17/12/2024

Interrupting your Christmas Festive feed with this weeks table of flowers and still Chrysanthemums are going strong. Well strong maybe an overstatement but they are still flowering and I reckon I will have a last cut for Christmas next week. Like Narcissus in the spring, chrysanthemums have varieties that bloom from mid summer right through to now, albeit under cover. I’ve got a pots in an (open doored) polytunnel but also pulled under the back porch. Cold doesn’t affect them but the rain and damp does so lots of air flow crucial.

I love this technicolour ‘Tula improved’ I know it’s not for everyone - what do you think?

10/12/2024

This last month of the year is the one I try to get ahead before winter sets in (or the rains!) this month I will be -

1. Lifting or mulching dahlias now that the frosts have blackened the foliage. Now the plants stop growing and make those shoot for next year.

2. Planting tulips

3. Planting bare root and root balled trees, shrubs & roses.

4. Planning my crop for next year

5. Sorting out seeds

6. Collecting leaves (or leave well alone if under trees and on borders)

7. Raise potted plant off the ground

8. Prune climbing roses

9. Plant up bulb to force and flower indoors

Taken from this months December Notes, on Floral Notes. It’s my last one in the series. Save this for quick reference. A link to the (free to read) longer version together with harvest lists is in the stories.

06/12/2024

I often wonder why people are so keen on flowers. They aren’t cheap, they don’t last and cause work. But still most flowers are bought from supermarkets, I imagine (because there isn’t much research to confirm) picked up on the weekly shop. A non essential yet so many of us have a bunch on the kitchen table.

I think at the end of the week, tired with busy lives, we want something that reminds us to connect with …. Something. The natural world? A slower pace? Simple unadulterated treats. I think that’s what flowers on the kitchen table are for.

But I am sure the best way to make that connection is with real local season flowers, ideally, cut from your own garden if you have one.

I’ve been thinking of starting a series with really simple vessels of flowers. Single varieties or just a couple, no floristry, just a few stems that do exactly what we want. Bring some life to a room and bridge inside the home to the season, a time and place.

I was going to start in January but why not now?

Simple Chrysanthemums (I need to go check the label! Starting strong….)

21/11/2024

Learnt a new word yesterday whilst out clearing the old greenhouse bed (the best soil in the walled garden).

Apricity.

Which means winter sun.

Not sure it was winter sun. I mean, it’s November so still autumn. Or actually locking (iykyk). Dahlias were still green and growing. But it’s a lovely word for that low sun isn’t it?

and I were clearing a very overgrown space, full of ground elder, ready for planting. It was almost balmy on the terrace.

I planned the planting during my January crop planning course (coming soon) but has taken all year to get it cleared!

19/11/2024

Round 2 of Grow Your Own Course yesterday. This was the Late Autumn session. This year, unplanned, I am running two smaller groups which, often as these things go, is turning out really well for all involved.

This class focusing on the end of the growing season including lifting tender plants (or not), root cuttings, planting out sept sown seedlings and corms etc

The focus is on soil cover, bed preparation, new beds, green manures and composting. There is a lot of discussion. There is no one way. I intend to encourage thinking through options and what is the right approach for your plot, resources and aims.

Throughout the course we are developing that relationship with our growing spaces, our intuition and understanding growing flowers as part of a wider agroecological and / or horticultural holistic approach.

The images are of a composting cake in the making, layers of partially fermented kitchen waste (using bokashi bran) and the old cake, made 6 months ago in May. Also the view from the tea table. I love this shot, and how it changes over the year and course.

Finally the dahlia bed’s which I’m expecting to be blackened, finally, by the frosts tonight.

14/11/2024

This is the sum total of a brilliant bright November day on the plots for the ‘Late Autumn’ session of the Grow Your Own Course. This is me digging up a perennial poppy before we took root cuttings.

A snapshot of lunch, the moment when we paused and chatted in the sunshine. And the long border looking quite uninspiring.

Not shown is when we reviewed the September sowings and progress, planting ranunuclus & anemones, covering with an environmesh tunnel, making a compost cake, reviewing green manures, how to prepare new beds (not necessarily cardboard & compost), cutting chrysanthemums, bulbs in ground and trays, finally lifting dahlias.

So immersed, we forgot to take pictures. There is little need since the handbooks are full of them but I like to have something to show for the day. Instead, soil under my nails, progress in the gardens and a group inspired with their next homework for planning their own plantings.

When was the last time you were so absorbed you forgot to take a picture?

02/11/2024

Some October - did a bit of a tour and new projects

1. Cutting the last dahlias before the only frost so far…
2. Persicaria amplexicaulis & p. microcephala Red Dragon
3.
4. Measuring
5. Birthday
6. Growing Project at
7. Anemones well sprouted for Spring flowers
8. Autumn projects

15/10/2024

12/10/2024

Just a few days before the frost (& after!)

08/10/2024

October’s Notes from the studio is out now, with harvesting list and task for the month including (but not limited to…) planting spring bulbs, bringing in the chrysanthemums, sowing first year perennials, sowing sweet peas and pre sprouting ranunculus and anemones. I send this newsletter every first Sunday of the month. It’s got the links, the how toos and everything else to plan your flowers.

16/08/2024

This is the long border. It’s long HA about 25m, only a metre deep at one end, 3.5m at the other. Designed to blur the awkward angle of this plot so the view is directed straight down the path to the studio door. Framed on one side by 9 productive beds and the polytunnel, the other by this densely planted herbaceous border.

I never water it. There are two short runs of shed roofs that do serve parts of the bed but the rest is flanked by drying flint wall that both protects in winter but heats like a radiator in the summer. I can’t plant on the wall to protect it.

Bar the few times I yank out nettles that have risen up through the planting or bindw**d strangling plants, I w**d this bed just once a year around late March / April when the great cut happens.

I don’t feed or mulch this bed either demonstrating resilient shrub and perennial planting. Of course it would look even better if I did but I want to show you how low maintenance a cutting bed can be, and how beautiful your garden can look with little resource of time, attention or money.

I do however cut buckets from here every week from late March to late October (and continue over the winter from shrubs and bulbs.) But you wouldn’t know, cutting to regenerate growth whilst maintaining balance of shape in the bed.

My Grow Your Own Cut Flowers Course starts in September. You don’t need to a dedicated cutting patch to grow flowers to cut, cultivating planting for wildlife, soil health and connection to the seasons all@year round. Come and see for yourself at the open day on Sunday 8th September!

15/08/2024

I was so flipping excited to be asked by to be in their brilliant magazine, for the ‘summer of love’ edition. Calixta and I worked together way back in 2018 on growing flowers and learnt a lot about scaling and profit margins. This conversation really made me think about how my growing practise has developed, how a polyculture approach to increase yield, diversity, soil health and resilience for productive growing. Excited embraces from me with Calixta just before we joined the panel at last month with and for the ‘British Cut Flower Revival’.

06/08/2024

Hosted the most gorgeous with on Sunday. It was a really special one.

Robyn is holding a very special event on zoom in Thursday evening at 8pm 8/8 - it will be a short prayerful mediation and sit in silence. Called ‘give peace a chance’ It’s free to join and as she says ‘add to the well of goodness’

See stories for a link to the zoom. I’ll share it as-well.

23/07/2024

My natural bent is to be in what I used to think was a ‘creative mess’. It’s taken me years and years to get to a point where I always fully tidy up after an event or garden session. Rather than leave buckets unwashed and wheelbarrows of w**ds.

Someone said, I think it was or maybe India Knight about always tidying up after yourself or doing the job when you see it.

Then when you come back, it’s like someone else did it for you! Felt like that when I walked back into the studio this morning. You wouldn’t have known I’d have been sorting buckets flowers earlier.

Not quite there yet but well ordered is the inspiration for creativity now for me. Finally got it!