Greetings everyone,
We hope that you are all finding safety and solace in our new inward reality. For those of you who continue to work in the public realm and essential services, we hope you are finding the best and safest way through this anomalous situation. To all of of you, we hope this newsletter brings a little of nature's nourishment, a green embrace, albeit through a screen. |
|
|
I am a great believer in gardening through crisis. Not everyone has access to a garden but gardening could be anything from a delightful postage stamp full of pots, caring for a houseplant, to germinating some tomatoes or sweet peas on a windowsill. If dirt under your fingernails isn't your thing, admiring the green fingered efforts of a neighbour or a gaze at a tree from a window or the street can sometimes be just enough of an earthly delight. Anything to forget the news for moment or two. During my walks through the city where I live, I am missing our flower field, unaccustomed to not travelling there most days. I miss the open countryside and the lightness, tranquility and excitement of a studio full of flowers, people and dogs. My daily dog walk has become a hyper-vigilant anxiety dance between me and every runner, cyclist, and walker also getting their 'one a day'. But I find myself charmed by the dandelions and forget-me-nots flourishing through cracks in the pavement, bringing me right back down to 'earth' and releasing me from fear of proximity, for a moment. Now I have taken to looking for these weeds wherever I go, I see how much more spiritedly yellow and blue they are than yesterday. I hope we all are gaining a little vibrancy by the day. |
|
|
Based at our farm, my mum Louisina has been able to continue to look after our garden with the help of my dad. They send me daily updates and there is so much comfort in this steady stream of whats app happenings. There are anemone, narcissi, and hyacinth in full swing, and snakes head fritillary we forgot we planted. The sweet peas, poppies and cornflower are developing their first buds in the tunnels. The first few tulips are ready for picking, we are keen to lift them from the soil with their giant, heavily-whiskered, root laden bulb satisfyingly intact - as is the way to harvest tulips as a cut flower. |
|
|
In the wild spots there are cherry blossom colouring the landscape from winter to spring. The first bees arrive. Growing flowers is always about seasons, cusps, right nows, and thens; time. The butterfly, the bud, the flower, the weed, the sun, the rain, the heat, the cold, all these beautiful right nows. With a never-ending flow of tasks, worries take a back seat as you move from hour to hour, day to day, season to season, year to year. My mum always says, 'it's 4 o'clock already!'. Nothing is ever truly finished, no final iteration ever reached. The only outcome that drives us is that there will be flowers to pick. And there always is. A cluster of muscari bulbs discarded in the compost heap, against all odds, without soil or shelter, bloomed on regardless. Of course, as a horticultural business, there are worries and stresses but I’ve yet to find an activity as suitably tiring and soothing as working in a garden. As our calendar for the summer season ceased, all plans and work on hold for an unknown time, the workaholic in me struggled for to accept and adjust. The flowers keep growing, much like my own inability to stand still. |
|
|
So, in amidst this strange time, we are delighted to have been able to get a flower postal service up and running. A longterm aspiration to develop our shop and make our flowers more accessible to the home and everyday. Now with more time on our hands, no better time. The first orders are in and we will be sending a box of what's in season in our flower field to anywhere in the UK. Availability will be announced every second Monday, the box will be available to purchase until Thursday at 12pm for delivery the next day. This means instead of composting our beautiful flowers, we can send them to the homes of the people who love them as much as we do. If you would like to order a box of flowers for this easter weekend, order via the website by clicking here by Thursday 9 April 12pm for delivery Friday 10 April. The shop will be closed for orders tomorrow at 12pm until Monday 20 April to give the next succession of flowers a chance to grow. |
|
|
My final thoughts came to me this afternoon, as my flower-vigilant eyes caught sight of last year's hydrangea flowers in my front garden. Not much left of them but the faintest, skeletal whisper of the former flower, suggesting their outlines so they were identifiable enough, just. In these times, it is important to remember that everything fades, even us. Whatever else happens, a fade, a replacement, a seasonal shift is certainly on the way. |
|
|
"But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grass - while I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths. I have not moved for many hours. Years, a lifetime, eddy past: one, two, three: into the early hours, the clock chimes. The wind is singing now”
― Derek Jarman, Modern Nature |
|
|
|
|
