Anna's Flower Farm

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!

19/07/2024

Some random shots of this years Grow Your Own Cut Flowers Course, and some great memories of the planning session in January, we all look so cold on the November session which seems a long time ago. It was! As my herbal tea wid shot attests, we’ll carry on sharing progress and cheering each other on in the WhatsApp group, meeting up at each others plots and Alumji dates here. I might start organising field trips…

Next course starts in September and on for presale this Sunday. I wonder what the next group will be like?

08/06/2024

Sounds trite to say, yet a week later, I’m still thinking about our pilgrimage to .end. Desperate to see what’s happening there whilst is reviving the house and gardens, they opened as part of the last Saturday.

The gardens are being gently teased from their 40 odd year slumber by and with respect for the loving process and huge amount of work to do when it could easily be stripped with a digger and replanted in weeks.

The tour of the house combined discreetly colourful storytelling, atmosphere conjuring* and wove the three pillars of Benton End that Lett and Morris wished to found the art school and space on; art, gardening and food. The teaching was to trust in students innate ability to intuit and learn. But also muck in.

This appealed and validated my own self taught ‘status’. Which always left me feeling less assured of anyone who had certificates to proof they know what they are doing despite over 25 years of working in horticulture and landscape design! I’ve dropped out of most ‘formal’ courses or programmes I started which left me pretty much unemployable bar one company I designed at for 4 years who had the same ethos. Basically get on with it, learn how to if don’t know and don’t f%*$ it up. You would wince at the huge projects I was let loose on!

It’s how I hope to encourage the ‘grow your own cut flowers’ attendees. There isn’t one way, but consider and hold firm to your values, try it yourself and see how it goes. Read the garden and trust your instincts. There is a huge amount of good and confidence that comes from that.

Beauty in the every day, which is art isn’t it? And always good food.

Can’t wait to return when Benton Ends opens next year.
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*which was so clever and considerate of both my young daughter who had no idea of the wild stories being described and the other visitors eager to hear them! Which spoke to another value, which was all were welcome. No hierarchy or exclusivity allowed which seems to me refreshing from what I have often experienced of the art, food and gardening worlds 😬🫣

27/05/2024

Getting into the season of ‘twiddly bits’ which makes making boutonnières for Kit & Caboodle Weddings much more fun.

18/05/2024

Iris obsession shows no sign of abating // lifting last of winter veg for dahlias // cutting & conditioning demo last week // 🤎// apple mint anyone? // just love this time when everything grows in front of your eyes and about to pop// (don’t like the slugs ArGh //

13/05/2024

Fresh beds for planting out // how it started 😳 // building a compost cake // orlaya

A good week.

Last chance to join me tomorrow for chat on cutting and conditioning spring flowers tomorrow. I’ll be live at 10.30am and sharing top tips and tricks for the best ways to harvest and prepare flowers for arranging and long life. Link in the bio!

04/05/2024

A May Bouquet clickbait to remind me that we are all about the flowers but hide the seriously sexy images behind.

Asparagus beds (because we are all about balance and why didn’t I do this years ago?) // orlaya which is so May to me now // homemade seed compost pride since I was reminded how dreadful so much of the bagged stuff is (recipes on coming) // the best salad I’ve ever tasted // maybe why?! // my compost feed for the garden today - recipe in this weeks make some this weekend before nettles flower.

Gorgeous day here after my day clearing was rained off yesterday. Off to make a compost cake!