milli proust

When did you decide to be a plantswoman?

My grandmother was a great horticulturalist and we used to visit her often in Oxfordshire. She taught me a lot of the names of the plants In her garden and in the wild. She would introduce us to them almost a touch theatrically. "Here is a Bird-foot trefoil...” And then she would tell us if we could eat it or it had medicinal properties. Their names never stuck until I had a garden of my own. I really do love plants, I find them endlessly fascinating and I've
always had a tiny patch to watch them grow whether that was a windowsill or a balcony. But I suppose it really took off when I moved in with my boyfriend in West Sussex and introduced more plants into my life. I've been doing the flowers for weddings for the past few years but on a very small scale. I trained as an actor and a side hustle was as an
archivist for a private photographic collection as well as Battersea Power station. I juggled all three until Covid hit.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES AND FRUSTRATIONS OF BEING A GARDENER?

(Laughs) The time a deer came in two weeks before a wedding and decimated the entire crop of flowers that I had been nurturing for almost 9 months. I had to think on my feet and figure out a way round it because brides usually want specific flowers and nature often has her own ideas. You can't ask a flower to open up and be perfect on a specific day, the way that I grow. What I do tell brides now is that I can't promise exactly what will flower on their wedding day, but I can promise it will be beautiful.

HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR GARDEN? ARE YOU INTENTIONALLY VERY RESTRAINED WITH YOUR PALETTE... THERE'S A QUIETNESS TO WHAT YOU GROW, LIKE A PAINTING.

Oh that is good to hear as I would love to be more restrained. I really love colour, it’s one of the most fun things about the garden for me. I grew up in a family of artists: my mum was my art teacher at school and my brother is a painter who went to the RA and my father is a curator and bookmaker. So in many ways I have been surrounded with this consistent extracurricular learning schedule about colour and form and I think that has definitely informed the way that I plant. I'm not afraid of colour or idiosyncratic plants. There is a certain freedom and I don't follow rules but just grow things I'm drawn to. Also, I'm a hopeless romantic so I also like to be quite playful. I like it when there are unexpected moments which is frankly better than anything I could have planned. It’s the same as when I create a bouquet or a vase arrangement, I'll have a sense of the drama I want to create in my head, but I won't know necessarily how It's going to turn out.

HOW ARE YOU SUPPORTING CHANGE IN YOUR PERSONAL OR PROFESSIONAL LIFE?

I am part of a flower farming collective called Flowers from the Farm and a couple of years ago, a small group of us from that collective set up a diversity action group or the DAG. The purpose of this was to notice the lack of diversity in our industry specifically, the flower farming industry and we wanted to analyse why that was and how we could change it? A key Issue we realised was that horticultural education is fairly inaccessible to a lot of people: it's either expensive or not considered by a lot of schools to be a viable career and it's a job that is passed down through families like farming. Land access is a huge part of that too; a lot of people go into it from a hobby perspective having had a garden or land. So this is another barrier. In 2021, we set up a scholarship for a unique year of mentorship and classes on flower farming, each scholar was paired with a mentor and the syllabus has a number of other guest lecturers. We had enough funding for 5 scholarship places and we are launching again for 2022. For 2021 it was for growers of colour specifically, but we are hoping to increase the number of places and widening it out to those in challenging socio-economic circumstances and really looking at diversity across the board.

YOU ATTENDED RADA, HOW DOES BEING AN ACTOR INFORM BEING A PLANTSWOMAN?

I don't think any type of education is wasted and studying there still informs everything that I do today. I see the garden as I would perhaps a stage and I'm a bit like a director in how I choose the planting plan and the stories I want it to tell. There are certain narratives - which totally transfer to bringing flowers to an event or a wedding - and having a crescendo in the summer. How flowers interact with each other is endlessly fascinating.

HOW DO YOU THINK GARDENING HAS CHANGED YOU AS A PERSON?

I grew up in London surrounded by concrete so I feel very lucky to have found a deep connection with the earth and nature. I think it has made me a lot less anxious. There are so many studies which show how it can affect your mental health and even just some of the bacteria in the ground can chemically change your mental health for the better. Although (laughs), I do think it's made me a lot more tearful...being outside in the fresh air and seeing so much beauty.

WHAT GIVES YOU THE GREATEST JOY?

I think there is great joy in putting different combinations of flowers together and wrapping them up with purpose.

Photography by Alex Cameron
Interview by Carolyn Asome