Miriam Calloway started cutting flowers in her mother's garden in Shropshire when she was nine years old. Not for arrangements, just because she liked the way a stem of sweet William looked in a jam jar on the kitchen windowsill. She studied horticulture at Writtle College in Essex, spent three years working at a wholesale market in London where she learned to move fast and buy smart, and then spent two more years as a junior designer at a large event floristry company in Mayfair. The Mayfair job paid well. It also involved a lot of foam, a lot of imported roses, and a lot of arrangements that were photographed and then thrown away the same evening.
The studio that became Jade Field Harbor opened in the autumn of 2017 in a converted outbuilding behind a row of terraced houses. The first winter was quiet. Miriam sold mostly to neighbours and to a small restaurant two streets away that wanted a weekly table arrangement. She drove to the wholesale market herself every Thursday at four in the morning, bought what looked good rather than what was on a list, and built everything on a long wooden table she had bought from a closing-down pub. By the spring of 2018 she had a small waiting list for the weekly bouquets. She has not advertised since.