Along with my husband Stefan and our two golden retrievers, Georgia and Frankie we have put down roots on my husbands family farm up the Pemberton Meadows.

You may have seen ‘Beks’ carrots in the local grocery store or picked up some of our seed potatoes for your own garden from the local nursery. While our farms main focus is growing those carrots and seed potatoes. My in-laws have been generous enough to hand over part of the field allowing me to bring my flower farming and florist dreams to life.

Year round you will find me dreaming up a new project for the garden or talking about adding a new flower to our fields. In 2022 we were lucky enough to move onto the farm after a number of years commuting from Poole Creek. With this brought the opportunity to build a (what some may call massive) veggie garden. It’s not all flowers over here and this is where the ‘farm’ part of Farm and Gardens comes in. I try to fill the kitchen garden with as much produce as I can, hoping to fill our cupboards and freezers lasting us through the winter. Were taking pounds and pounds of tomatoes, a few hundred garlic bulbs, asparagus, peas, beans and more.

Much to my husband dismay at the time, he loves them now, we also built a large duck coop and added a handful of ducks to our farm. These cuties provide us with eggs almost year round and constant joy in their quacking and swimming antics. If I had it my way ducks wouldn’t be the only farm animals we had.

Aside from some of the obvious goals like having a succesfull crop and limited bug pressue I aim to make the garden really beautiful. I constanly draw inspiration from english garden design, other gardeners, Pinterest and more, looking to find unique ways I can make the garden stand out. That could be growing pumpkings overtop an archway or adding walkways and a place to have a cup of tea amoungst the buzzing beas and chirping birds. When you come to the farm, whether that’s for a workshop or to pick up a bouquet my ultimate goal is for you to take home that beauty and be inspired yourself to have your own peice of paradise.

Now back to the cutting garden, if you take a drive up the Pemberton Meadows you may see the tips of towering sunflowers from the road or myself and the dogs working away. Throughout the winter months you can find me tucked away in my floral studio where I have converted every spare inch to shelving and grow lights. Each flower and vegetable you see out in the garden is started from seed through the months of January to April.

Each spring, once the snow has melted and the ground has dried I will pull up the landscape fabric and start to work in the reminants from last years blooms back into the soil. This is where my husband and the tractor come in handy! Once this is done we have a fresh space to start planting another years worth of seedlings.