Notes From The Field - March 2023

We made it through January. And then we made it through February. I know they’re always hard, but this years tricky months felt particularly challenging. It was my first winter of juggling a baby, life, and work. Having solo-parented my way through weeks of it while my partner worked abroad, on top of being more than a little convinced I might be solar powered…. I. Am. Tired. A flavour of tired that I’m not sure I’ve felt before- I’ve always been ok on not much sleep, I’ve never minded long physical days on my feet, and I can keep a cool head when there are many plates that need to be kept spinning, but it’s the cumulative effect of it all with no time to catch my breath that makes this sensation, wholly and exhaustingly new.

Some ‘Notes on Motherhood’ may be sneaking in here- because that has been my main landscape since we last spoke. That said, I’ll keep them brief and I’ll endeavour to keep my newsletters about nurturing plants, not humans. They say sleep when the baby sleeps- but I’ve found that my joy and energy comes into a more tangible focus when I can work on things I love, and having spent most of my pregnancy sideways vomiting with hyperemesis, and much of the initial postpartum strung up to machines in hospital, I felt like I had been denied access to the the things that make me spark for a long, long while.

So when the baby has been sleeping, I’ve been working. And I think that’s ok. At least, that how I’m deciding to do this bit of life. Grateful to my Mother who has been popping down at weekends when she’s off from teaching to hold, entertain and love Rex so I can sneak in a few more hours of soul-nourishing work, and keep those business plates spinning.

Since January I’ve had two full days a week back at work (from this week it will be three) and Paris and I have been making the most of them with huge moves on the new field for our Alma | Proust project. The Polytunnel went up smoothly and beautiful with the help from First Tunnels, and by the second week of January we got our backs bent and muscles aching by shifting the mulch and making the first set of beds.

February saw us plant biennials and perennials that have been overwintering outside at the home plot. We planted out the ranunculus in the tunnel (too soon for that long cold snap we had - they’ve been sulking ever since), and plenty of things are hardening off, getting ready for the ground. Next year I know it will be easier when we’re not juggling setting up a field, sowing, moving things between the two plots, planting…. and a small baby. I keep reminding myself that.

The thing that has been keeping us going has, unsurprisingly been the flowers. Each one that opens brings us much joy, inspiration and dare I say it without sounding too saccharine- hope. We are absolutely swimming in ambition for our new field and the inclination to bite off more than we can chew is a temptation we’re having to regularly keep in check. A sense of overwhelm has been creeping in during our kitchen table planning sessions, but when we see the flowers opening it all feels worth it.

Through these darker months, we’ve been working on some lovely client briefs that will be coming up this season and we’ve been executing the first few events together too. The client and brief of dreams came through a few weeks ago. If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a long time, you might remember back in 2017 I wanted to grow pink radicchio as my winter crop, and flowers as my summer crop. I couldn’t source the seeds, so spent a year or two trying to cross breed some varieties to get a colour I liked, with absolutely no success I should add. A lesson learnt in leaving radicchio breeding to the experts.

After consistent, obsessive scouring, I finally sourced some seed for the beautiful Rosa del Veneto in 2020 and had my first crop of pearly pink leaves in November that year. I have been growing them for myself ever since. And then came the brief in February to fill an event with pink radicchios. Bowls of Veneto peony-pretenders, and I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-coral Tardivo were to be layered up in sculptural decadence for a gorgeous dinner. It felt full circle and it was so, so fun. I’m now eating my way through a tonne of bitter lettuce, helped along by a delicious recipe from Skye McAlpine’s new book “A Table Full of Love’.

This week there’s a growing list of pricking out, potting on and some more satisfying seed sowing. Plus getting the roses in the ground and putting the final touches to our irrigation. I’m so looking forward to the blooms that will make all these plans and efforts so worth it, and when the time comes, and we have bumper crops of more blooms than our events can handle, we’d love to share them with you. So stick around this season and you’ll be the first to know when our stems, which I can absolutely guarantee are filled with so much of our love, tending, time and energy that it makes them more beautiful than most, will be available to be delivered straight to your door.

Wishing you a happy Winter-Spring.

It all gets good from here.

Milli x