About Linda

What can I tell you?

At Wisley

I am the mother of 4 lovely people.  I am married to a fruit farmer and we live in the Elgin Valley which is in the Western Cape of South Africa.

After the children flew the nest and the apple farming took a dive I decided to pick flowers from the garden and sell them at the local farm stalls – rather a pathetic contribution you might say, and you are quite right, 6 posies a week doesn’t exactly pay the wage bill!

However I felt as if I was at least doing something, and to my astonishment the posies were very popular and the demand has steadily grown, along with related activities.

Very soon I was persuading my husband Corrie, that we needed to remove some trees so we could plant flowers and herbs.  He didn’t put up much resistance and soon we were pulling out rows of trees on a regular basis (which we hope to continue doing!).

We started propagating to increase our own plantings, and now do so to sell to retail nurseries, as well as landscapers (on a fairly small scale).  We do a regular number of posies and bunches of flowers each week; give workshops on various aspects of gardening while trying to do what we do as organically as we know how.  The garden is full of birds, frogs and other creatures that keep the garden humming and buzzing!

I have a shadow that follows me everywhere.  A lovely Alsation that my son Malcolm and his wife Jill rescued.  Wolfie was an abused, abandoned dog in a very bad state when they took him in.  They now live in Denver so Wolfie came to the farm and has slowly but surely lost his distrust of those round him and has become a relaxed happy dog.  They were so caring of his rehabilitation and did all the ground work – I have the pleasure.

Cannot load flowers into the combi without Wolfie

Into the water and swimming!

Christmas 2009

The Family

My children were rather critical of the fact that there were 2 photos of the dog and none of them!
I have now remedied this with the latest family photo taken with everyone present this Christmas – a wonderful occassion.