F LOWERS
uilding a garden is one of those tasks that gets more complicated the closer you look at it. You can, of course, take the well- travelled route and head to a nursery, grab the first flowers that look nice, pop them in a hole and wonder why they don’t make it past a single season – but a well-planned, thriving patch requires research, a lot of groundwork and thoughtful, considered planting before you’ll start to see the first blooms. And it’s much the same with a business – especially for Anna Taylor, whose deep love of plants and talent for styling flowers has blossomed into a thriving ‘cottage garden’ industry. Nestled deep in the heart of Audley End’s village is the red-brick-walled garden that’s home to Anna’s Flower Farm: it’s tucked away, just about visible on Google Earth as ten-ish tidy rows of green amongst the mature trees and sprawling buildings that make up the historic neighbourhood.
IMAGES Whilst the location is as photogenic as you might expect, Anna points out that everything on the site has a job to do, even the chickens...
Approaching the farm leads you past neat, white-walled workers’ cottages and through a grassy paddock, before a small sign reassures that you are in the right place and haven’t just driven across one of English Heritage’s lawns. Anna’s Farm is normally a hive of activity (quite literally: two bee colonies are a recent addition to help boost pollination). There might be a flower- arranging workshop taking place around a table in the recently cleared studio, or you could stumble across a children’s class deep in the leafy beds – or perhaps just Anna and her team, picking and cutting blooms for an upcoming event. Much like the flowers that blossom and fade almost hourly, every day at the farm is different, but embracing that ephemerality is at the heart of Anna’s ethos. One of her many clients is Kettle’s Yard, where Anna supplies event decoration and her trademark posies of seasonal flowers for small spaces within the exhibition rooms. When the internationally acclaimed artist
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