Anna Maria Smeds

Anna Maria Smeds’ Greek Roots

I found Anna Maria Smeds the way I find most of the growers I write about: scrolling Instagram. What stopped my thumb was the colour — that particular blue and white, olive groves, terracotta pots — unmistakably Greek. I lived in Crete twenty years ago, and I learned that Greeks do not merely enjoy food; they are passionate about it, and I saw it all over Anna’s page before I’d read a single caption.

​I usually keep this column for UK growers. But after the summer we’ve just had, I’m not sure that rule holds anymore — the last three months have felt more like the Peloponnese than the Home Counties, and a garden that runs on Mediterranean logic suddenly feels like useful reading rather than a novelty. So this month, an exception: a trip across the Atlantic.

​Anna grows in Virginia, Zone 7B, but her garden is really a translation of two places she loves. Her father’s parents came from Karpathos; her mother grew up in Crete. She spent childhood summers at her grandparents’ home in Tarpon Springs, Florida — a Greek town in all but geography — where her grandfather kept a large garden, and her mother and grandmother cooked straight from it. That’s the root of everything she does now: food and garden were never separate ideas.

​She didn’t cook until she had children of her own. Anna’s mother, the best cook Anna knows, never measured a thing. So Anna stood beside her and measured everything, turning memory into recipes she could actually hand down.

Anna Maria Smeds’ Inspiration to Begin Gardening

​The gardening side came later and from grief as much as love. When her grandfather and an aunt — both devoted, lifelong gardeners — passed away, Anna realised how much their gardens had shaped her, and how badly she wanted one. A local Master Gardening course followed, then years at a community plot. She built her own garden alongside a wide circle of gardeners found through classes, garden centres and Instagram.

​Eventually the two threads wove into one project: a YouTube channel, Gardening Tips and Antigone’s Greek Cooking, where garden and kitchen sit side by side. It’s a habit still common in Greek villages, where most households grow much of what ends up on the table. Anna’s project is a reminder that “grow your own” isn’t a modern British enthusiasm so much as an old, ordinary way of living that some families never let go of.