F LOWERS
ANNA’S CAMBRIDGESHIRE
I love going to Kettle’s Yard: I really like The Garden Kitchen there. I used to eat with them at the Botanic Gardens a lot, I’d take the children when they were very little, because it’s such a good place for them – they do good coffee and good cakes, plus it’s walled and the children can’t escape... I also love the Henry Moore Studios & Gardens just outside Bishops Stortford, over the border in Hertfordshire. You can explore his house and studio, and see many of his sculptures – it’s really special. On a sunny day I’d head to Grantchester, maybe take the inflatable kayak and do a bit of wild swimming… If I was going OUT out, I’d go to NOVI – I love their bar, and I designed their roof terrace garden – they’ve been huge supporters of my work from the beginning. It’s not open all year but definitely worth a trip.
bureau and one on the mantlepiece,” she says. “She’s never liked a big vase of flowers because it doesn’t fit the proportions of their sixties house – and everyone always goes on about how lovely they are, but she just has a little snip round her garden. I think that’s what I’ve been inspired by – and I want other people to be able to make them, too.” As well as supplying flowers for events, businesses and some of the most prestigious places in our city – if you’ve eaten at Parker’s Tavern, you’ve dined beneath Anna’s astonishing dried-flower displays or sipped a cocktail alongside her botanicals – she also offers a growing set of workshops, either based at her farm or out on location at special places around our region. “We do lots of classes: arranging classes and the year-long ‘Grow Your Own Cut Flower’ classes. I think our growing class is absolutely amazing – it’s expensive,” Anna acknowledges, “but we do so much on the class, and attendees take home every element – loads of
Ai Weiwei recently visited the gallery, he took a single photo of Anna’s flowers and uploaded it to his Instagram account, attracting nearly 2500 likes. Anna was overwhelmed by the artist’s interest, writing in a thoughtful blog post that the enormity of the event was that the pictured posy could “never be replicated: it is a snapshot of that day. The day after, the blooms will have opened and developed a little further… a little posy of cut flowers in your home, on the kitchen table, in the hallway welcoming you and your guests home are simple luxuries that we can all have in our daily lives. It can be just a few branches or a single flower enjoyed for its exquisite, natural and ephemeral beauty: pure luxury for all”. Anna reiterates the significance of the small posy of flowers when we meet in her farm on an afternoon in late summer, drinking tea in dappled sunlight as butterflies flit around the peonies. “My mum used to put little posies around the house: one on the sideboard, one on the
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
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