January

It began with a happy new year. Except, in a moment of moody, downward-spiral, I refused to acknowledge that fact, and took myself to bed well before midnight. The gloom was felt, Sussex got muddy, and the short days of winter-darkness seemed hard to face. It was going to be a challenging January for everyone.

Despite it all, the month had moments of great beauty. January, in all its bare bleakness, still has heart. Marking how the winter light falls so low and so saturated. Watching clouds of breath suspended in the cold, and all the wonder of being alive held in that moment. Walking on the blue outlines of frost in the field, and hearing the tiny icicles crack under my human weight. I searched for solace and found it, as always, in nature.

My January evenings and weekends were spent working on all the details for the first Flowers From the Farm Diversity Scholarship, and today the winners have finally been announced. Having had so many brilliant and strong submissions, it's clear how vital this scholarship programme is and we're excited that we can already confirm Flowers from the Farm will open applications for a second time at the end of 2021. I didn't know Marianne from Wolves Lane Flower Company before June last year, but she's now on my speed-dial for the amount of admin involved in the DAG work. When the work bit ends, the conversation inevitably turns to the growing of flowers, and the natural shift in the talk from growing flowers turns to life and all its rivets. I quietly hope she's become a friend and not just a fellow admin tackler. It's been a light in the dark this January.

There's lots of positivity surrounding the steps that the DAG group at Flowers From the Farm takes to create more opportunities and more inclusive space in Horticulture. We will be digging deep to keep this momentum going throughout the year and onwards. This is just the start.

January finally saw a cold snap arrive here. The garden hadn't been touched by the killing-frost yet this winter, despite hards frosts across the UK, and I had dahlia buds threatening to burst open on Christmas Day. The cold finally came hard mid-month, with blood-red, morning light, spilling out all over the iced fields. And then the snow came, not like the blankets and duvets that elsewhere that were causing a nationwide uplift of spirits, just a little flurry, that stayed around long enough to make us smile, but was gone again by lunchtime.

Speaking of lunchtimes. Lunchtimes have seen new levels of coleslaw obsession. Winter cabbages are in season and arrive anew in every veg box delivered, along with a supply of last summer's onions retrieved from storage, and a new mandolin slicer (excellent kitchen gadgets are always my most treasured gifts at Christmas), I can't stop making slaw. Smoky chilli, red cabbage and citrus slaw…. Sweet apple, carrot, and spring cabbage slaw…. Celeriac and pear….. Slaw, slaw, slaw, slaw, slaw. So good, so tasty, so easy, so quick, and not that much washing up, which is somewhat of a relief since dishwasher has been broken all month.

Let's talk flowers in January, they are few and far between, but they do exist, they're real, just mostly shorter, rarer, and likely to be a daffodil. That said, my garden wanted to confuse everyone this January by throwing out a couple of useable roses. Hellebores began, as did the snowdrops, heralding the beginning of the cycle- no wonder the sight of them fills us all with such hope.

You’re going to have to indulge me for a second because I want to show you the joy of my winter working spaces. These spaces to escape to, outside of the four walls of living space of the home, made winter lockdown much more bearable. The greenhouse- a revelation, and the studio- (whose title makes it sounds glamorous when it’s really just a shed with peeling paint, and the luxury of electricity) full of beauty being the storage site of the dried flower crop. Both act as my office at different times in the day; the studio; a shipping-hub, shop, storage room, and place of some creative merit, and the greenhouse- a source of hope, new life, and scenes of experiments.

Finally, let’s talk about seeds. I know that might be the main reason you’re here, and I’m grateful for that. Because that means you might want a packet or two, which means you might love them as much as I do. It’s been a labour of love, one that continued this month, as I painted a few more illustrations to add a few more varieties to the offerings in the shop. There’s 56 in total now. The collection is a mixture of cutting garden staples, easy to harvest, easy to grow, and some of my absolute favourites to design with (I’m looking at you Phlox). This is just a fraction of the things I grow here, and only the very best made the seed-shop cut. I wish I had the energy to do 300 varieties. Maybe one day.

I outsourced the printing this time (I am done with muttering obscenities at my home printer). I found a brilliant, family-run printer, just 20 minutes from here, with an excellent environmental profile, and I'm so happy to be working with them, they've done such a fantastic job with translating the illustrations onto the packets, they're beautiful! When they arrived last week, I immediately got one of every variety out and put them into colour order—a very, very satisfying, top-highlight of January. I've been setting aside two hours a day to fill them with seeds, (some from the garden, and some sourced from specialist seed farmers, like Roger Parsons, also just 20 mins away from here), and it won't be long until I put them in the shop. It's a limited run again, and some of the seeds won't be back for sale until the Late Summer harvests are dried in Autumn. So grab them when you can. I can't wait for you to have them!