About Us

Oh why oh why are you called Half an Acre?

It is taken from one of my favourite quotes - heard on a 1950's recording of Gardener's Question Time.
"'No matter how small one's garden one should always set aside at least half an acre for wildflowers."
I think that would be great advice if only life was like that! And so we have my little garden - full of lovely things to look at and play with.

Half an acre would be lovely, thank you very much, but, as it is, the Half an Acre garden is indeed quite small with a few weeds here and there. I dream of that meadow though.
One day ..... and there will be a hammock.

And who are you?

I am Anna. I live in West Sussex, UK surrounded by oak trees. I run Half an Acre from a messy little room in our house. I also have a husband and three small boys. It is noisy, as you can imagine, and I retreat to my work room on a regular basis! We have no television but loads of board games and lego and pencils. It is full of colour and interesting things. I don't own half an acre sadly. The garden is quite small and full of those oak trees. In between clearing up the leaves I design and paint wooden decorative things to cheer up the walls of your home.  Every so often I find something lovely that I haven't seen anywhere else and add those to the mix too.

How did this all happen?

Half an Acre started because I was bored of what I saw.  All the shops had the same stuff and I could walk into most homes and know where they had been shopping.  I wanted to be visually stimulated and inspired and find things I had not seen before.  As with most things it seems that it is easier to get on and do it yourself!  The world also needed some colour!  There were plenty of tasteful bunches of sanded wood fish but I wanted zingy fabulous fish!  I wanted to be able to give a gift to a child that the mother hadn't already seen in the shops on the highstreet or from one of those regular mail order catalogues - you know the ones.  I wanted orginality, a delightful surprise and something not made from plastic!
So I started to make stuff ......