Our story

I was dragging friends round National Trust gardens long before any of them saw the appeal.

For years we lived in London with no garden, so I rented an allotment, watched Gardeners' World on Friday evenings and wondered what it would be like to have fields and hedgerows at the end of the road.

When Covid came, we moved in with my mother-in-law in Surrey. Her house backs onto the canal, with woodland all round, and she is a serious gardener and a wonderful cook. That summer we picked elderflowers together and made elderflower champagne. I still think of it whenever I smell elderflower.

The candles began with one I was given when my parents died. It was a small, kind thing. I looked up who had made it and thought I'd like to try.

We now live just outside Haslemere, with fields and hedgerows at the end of the road. I still work full time, and I pour every candle myself, in small batches, in the evenings. Each scent is a place I love - a hedgerow, a walled garden, a cottage garden at a particular moment - and each comes with its own Field Guide, because the story behind a scent is half the pleasure of it.

1% of every sale goes to The Wildlife Trusts, to help look after places like these.

Bridget