From the golden wheatfields of my childhood home to the dreamy English gardens of my husband’s, I’ve savored the natural beauty in my surroundings. We now live in New York’s Hudson Valley, which to us is the perfect blend of both, a happy meeting in the middle.
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Why the name Wandlebury Green?
Just outside Cambridge, England, on the Gog Magog Hills, is a magical forest steeped in myth and legend called Wandlebury Woods, which has been around since Roman times. Growing up, this was one of my husband's favorite places to go, and now whenever we get back to England, we love to take our kids and enjoy being out in this beautiful part of the world.
About Me
I was born on a farm in central Kansas. Cowboy wallpaper still covered my dad’s childhood bedroom in our little white farmhouse on the top of a hill, where I spent the summers running barefoot through my grandmother’s vegetable garden and raced my brother to the loft of our red barn, where we’d make hay forts and jump out of the window swinging on a knotted rope.
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My grandparents’ farm had apricot, peach, and cherry trees, and a row of lush peonies lining the dirt driveway. One of my earliest memories is of being held high and reaching through a canopy of leaves to pick cherries, the dappled light shining in my eyes. It felt like heaven to me.
As a child, my favorite thing to do was to wander our land. While my parents were busily working all day, I was left free to roam, and it was the sweetest freedom, to have acres of land in which to run and explore and play make believe and lie in the tall grass, staring up at the sun and twirling the green blades through my fingers. I felt the earth speaking to me, passing on a knowledge deep in my bones, a peacefulness and solidity within me.
My parents owned a grain elevator, and harvest was the most thrilling time of the year. All the farmers for miles around would drive their bounty to our elevator, where we’d work from dawn to dusk, weighing the bushels of wheat and storing it in our giant silver grain bins.
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When I think of a Kansas summer, I think of driving down bumpy country roads in a pickup truck, the windows down, my hair flying wild in the wind, of wearing tank tops and cutoff jean shorts and flip flops, the air smelling of freshly harvested grain wafting over the fields. I think of the feeling of community during harvest time, how all of us, young and old, rose early in the morning to work the fields, each of us having a role in this giant endeavor to bring in the grain. I think of how it felt to fall into bed at the end of the day, happily exhausted by a day well lived.
Eventually, I got accepted into a college honors program that involved spending my junior year at Oxford University in England, and I flew far from those golden wheatfields. Amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford, a certain young man swept me off my feet, and we spent the year having wonderful adventures in the romance of the English countryside. After graduation, we got married and launched our life together in England, where we lived for four years.
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In the ensuing years, we’ve lived in many places, and eventually we found ourselves settling at last in a most beautiful place. The Hudson Valley, New York, is to us the perfect blend. It is both urban and agricultural, sophisticated and rustic, modern and historical.
Living here in this farming community has reawakened in me a longing for the earth. It has always been a part of me, a dream just under the surface. But I’ve lived for so long with the belief that the only sure and secure way to work is in an office. A life lived outdoors is a luxury when there are far more practical matters to attend to, spreadsheets to create, documents to edit, numbers to crunch. But as I’ve settled into this new home, each time I’m outside planting a vegetable garden, designing a new flower bed, or even just trimming the shrubs, I feel that long-ago sense of peacefulness and solidity. I can’t help but feel that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, my hands in the dirt, my mind completely immersed in the task at hand.
In the summer of 2021, I enrolled in the New York Botanical Garden’s horticulture course in sustainable gardening. Each time I go to class, my heart soars with the thrill of immersing myself in the natural world.
I plan to share about my gardening discoveries here on this site, and perhaps help others reconnect with nature as well. May we all find a way to sustain a world full of abundant life and joy while we’re here on this beautiful planet.
Thank you for visiting me here at
Wandlebury Green