4 minute read
The plot thickens
For the past decade, Anna Greenland has tended the vegetable gardens of some of the UK’s top restaurants but having fallen in love with a beautiful old Suffolk barn in need of restoration, she has now decided it’s finally time to start digging her own plot.
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Anna’s real passion for growing was first piqued in Cornwall, where she supplied mixed salad leaves and edible flowers to Jamie Oliver’s newly opened Fifteen Cornwall, and worked at The Lost Gardens of Heligan. Wanting to explore the organic gardening route further, in 2010 she enrolled at the University of California, Santa Cruz to study Ecological Horticulture. “At the time, California was seen as the mecca for organic growers, and I had six blissful months living a very rural life on the university farm.” The course led to Anna becoming involved in a setting up a sustainable urban food programme at the renowned Huntington Botanical Gardens in Los Angeles – the US equivalent of Kew. On her return to the UK, Anna was delighted to land a job as the head vegetable gardener at Raymond Blanc’s Michelin starred Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. “It was an amazing experience. At the time, Raymond was at the forefront of redefining our concepts of what to expect from restaurant menus and we would grow experimental vegetables and new varieties of edible flowers and perennials, always pushing the boundary in terms of taste.” After three years, Anna was asked by Soho Farmhouse to create the fruit, herb, and vegetable gardens for their new boutique hotel in the Cotswolds. This brought new challenges as
the garden was nothing but a muddy patch of land that needed transforming into a productive organic vegetable garden in less than six months. “It was exciting and terrifying at the same time, but such a privilege to bring to fruition all that I had learnt. After three fun, vibrant and slightly mad years, I was proud of the mature, bountiful and established garden I left behind.”
Looking for the next chapter, in 2018 Anna and her husband Hugo viewed a derelict barn overlooking the Deben Valley and instantly fell in love - both with the location, and the possibilities it promised. Luckily, they were able to rent the neighbouring farmhouse whilst they set about transforming the barn into a family home and creating their own potager garden. Anna shows me around and soon I am lost in her vison of the sheltered courtyard garden, the wildflower meadow and orchards, and the promise of the teaching classroom where she plans to run courses and host supper clubs. It is indeed a magical spot, with sweeping views out across the planned kitchen garden to the Suffolk countryside beyond, and I love the mix of materials, from the original timber cladding of the main barn to the wonderful patina of the Corten steel sheets on the extension.
It is a three-year project, but they have comfortably settled into life at the farmhouse, and the family now includes their 18-month-old daughter Bonnie and dog Fig. Hugo is project managing the build and Anna spent lockdown writing a book for first time gardeners called ‘Grow Easy’, which will be out this September. We sit
chatting in the sunshine outside the farmhouse kitchen whilst little Bonnie explores the garden, bucket in hand, and Fig repeatedly drops a ball into my lap with a look of hopeful expectancy! Anna comes from a long line of gardeners and has fond memories of watching her father working on his allotment or visiting her grandmother’s beautiful flower garden.
“Although I love growing, for me it is all about how I will be able to use the ingredients in the kitchen. I love picking summer salad leaves, rocket and French sorrel to mix with edible flowers such as colourful nasturtiums and calendula, and nothing beats digging the first row of new potatoes and plunging them straight into a tub of salted boiling water to be served with fresh parsley and butter.” Anna has certainly made good use of the farmhouse garden. The lawn is now a patchwork of vegetable beds, metal tubs brim with the brightly coloured stems of last year’s flamingo chard, terracotta pots nurture a mix of fragrant herbs, and a chipped teapot is growing a jaunty hat of chive spikes.
Suffolk has always welcomed those who love the land and with Anna’s appetite for growing, I cannot wait to see how her new kitchen garden flourishes and what rich pickings it will provide for future suppers.
