Ooooooooh, England. You truly have my heart.
My maternal grandmother was British, she has an incredible story. She grew up in WW1 as a child in England who grew up in an orphanage, and remembers land mines from WW1 going off in her neighborhood where she played. In WW2 she lost her husband, and was a single young mother who worked through the war. After losing her first husband in the war, she met an American man in the Navy at a dance when his ship was docked for a few days in the town she lived in. She married him, took her four year old on a boat and they made their journey to American to start a new life and wait for her husband to finished out the war. She knew sacrifice, and the beauty that can come from it. She appreciated nature in every way, and never took anything for granted. I credit her for giving me my love for flowers, and for teaching me to appreciate all the earth has to offer, both big and small. I had visited England before, but in the Summer of 2015 we took a trip there and stayed mostly in the countryside for a month. We took each day very slow, and made sure to live every moment soaking up all of the beauty around us. It was a sort of pilgrimage for me, and I felt so connected to my grandmother everywhere we went. The gardens and outdoor spaces there were the highlight for me, a few of them captured here in my travel photos.
I am teaching a collaborative workshop with Becca and Maz of the Garden Gate flower Company this June in England! For more information and to sign up, you can head over here
