Planting seeds for justice — and for joy.

Flora & Quill is the garden side of Sharon Brien — writer, racial justice educator, and deeply committed gardener based in Wells, Somerset.

The garden and the writing have always belonged together: both require patience, attention, and a willingness to tend things that take their own time to come good.

Sharon has been growing in this Somerset garden for several years, developing an ever-deeper relationship with the soil, the seasons, and the extraordinary network of life that a garden sustains. The seeds offered here are gathered from her own plants — each one hand-harvested, properly stored, and sent out with everything she knows about it.

The writing — collected in the Garden Journal — is slow and attentive. It notices what most hurried writing misses: the way a medlar bletts in October, the particular neediness of a young pear tree, the intelligence of a bay that has been quietly growing in the corner for twenty years. The medlar is already looking pleased with itself.