Janet Mavec: Bird Haven Farm

Janet Mavec is the visionary behind Bird Haven Farm, and an iconoclast in her career as a jewelry dealer and designer.  One of the first females to move in the antique jewelry dealer circles in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, Janet defied the traditional. She elevated the crucifix into jewelry for pop stars. Her whimsical jewelry line repositions the green bean into a fashion statement.  

Janet has documented her process and her 20-year-obssession with the acreage in her first book Bird Haven Farm: The Story of an Original American Garden. She uncovers her process of how she edits and elevates, how elements of nature inform to create a beautiful, productive, and harmonious garden within this slice of Earth.  

While living here part-time she began to design jewelry that reflected what flew,  swam, grew, or hooted around her, including the aforementioned green bean, and her famed peace dove. 

The former city girl and designer now lives on Bird Haven Farm full-time with her husband, three dogs, many owls, uninvited voles, and, thank goodness, no deer.  

Jinny Blom is a landscape gardener who began her London-based practice in 2000. Since then, she has created gardens and large estates all over the world. Her work, which focuses on conservation and the best use of land, has been celebrated internationally. She has created therapeutic gardens for the NHS charity CW+, most recently for the new ICU at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital where she is Artist-in-Residence. The garden forms part of academic research into the positive effects of biophilia on health. 

In 2002 HRH the Prince of Wales chose Jinny to help co-design his Healing Garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. She went on to design two further Chelsea show gardens for Laurent-Perrier in 2006 and 2007, winning Gold. She returned in 2013 with Prince Harry’s first excursion into the show, in its Centenary year, with a conceptual garden designed to raise awareness of the landlocked country of Lesotho ravaged by the HIV epidemic. 

Jinny trained and practised as a transpersonal psychologist and psychotherapist, working for many years in mental health. In 1996 she chose to devote herself to her lifelong interest in natural landscapes and gardens. She has been a columnist for The Times, contributed regularly to radio and television worldwide, and in 2002 won BBC Radio Broadcaster of the Year for her Radio 4 Woman’s Hour feature following the King’s Chelsea Garden production. Jinny has been nominated Woman of the Year an unprecedented three times – in 2002, 2007 and 2013 – for her services to society.