The Flower Fields
I have been working with artisan British flower growers for over 3 years and latterly became interested in the history of cut flower production especially in Lincolnshire, one of the UK’s major cut flower growing regions. This work is located in South Holland, a rural district in the South East of Lincolnshire where man drained, reclaimed and enclosed nearly three quarters of a million acres of fenland and by the late 1800s flower bulbs produced both for cut flowers and for sale as a dried bulb were a well established crop in the Spalding area.
In 2019 I was commissioned by NEPN (North East Photography Network) as part of Observe Experiment Archive to photograph commercial flower growers around Spalding in Lincolnshire to explore how technology is changing how we grow flowers in this country. This included traditional Lincolnshire mixed rotation family farms and larger commercial growers who mainly grow a limited range of flowers under glass and are pioneering the use of various technologies including hydroponics and optical graders.
An excerpt from The Flower Fields was shown in the Observe Experiment Archive exhibition at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens (15 November 2019 – 05 January 2020).
The Flower Fields was published by NEPN in 2021.
Observe Experiment Archive was also supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.