Hello! I’m Anna and I thought I would introduce myself with a bit of my gardening history. Growing up, I did not enjoy yard work and my Mom is fond of reminding me that I would often say that when I was an adult I would have gardeners to do all the weed pulling. That has not come to pass and I still dislike pulling weeds!
However, I did ask to be allowed to have a vegetable garden and I managed to grow a few tomatoes in a raised bed and beans in a small plot. Looking back at pictures, I realize I was lucky anything grew as there was too much shade!
Fast forward many years to Bryce and I buying our first, sweet home. We did lots of lanscaping but my very favorite thing was our small herb garden. This was during the time that I was first learning how to cook and I loved, as I still do, being able to step out of the kitchen and snip fresh herbs to use in my dishes. I haven’t been without an herb garden ever since!
While we didn’t have the space for a large garden, Bryce and I would often visit gardens, wandering the grounds and dreaming. When we had our children we often took them to Botanical Gardens as they usually had creative and beautiful spaces for children.
When we left Atlanta, and moved to a darling town in New Jersey, we made a children’s garden in our yard and to this day, I think it might be my very favorite garden. It was a magical space that we had picnics in, performed plays on the sandbox stage, read books and did a million other things in. The children and I spent many, many hours in this garden and I will forever remember that sweet space. Eventually we also got a small vegetable and flower garden growing.
I enrolled in, and completed, the Master Gardening program from our county extension and started taking more workshops and classes on growing flowers. Around this same time, Bryce and I started to feel like we wanted a bit more land. We eventually landed here at our farm, Frogs Hollow! One of the very first things we did was create a large garden to grow fruits, vegetables and, of course, flowers.
Last year, we carved out space in our field to grow flowers for market. We’ve started very slowly by dipping our toes in! We had a roadside honor stand where we sold bouquets of flowers and it did well! We also took the Floret Flower Online Course and I can’t recommend it enough. Erin is so free with her vast knowledge and she saved us a lot of time and energy.
So here we are at the very beginning of a new endeavor of growing and learning in lots of ways. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I can’t wait to see where this next step leads.
