Your Summer: Joya Berrow

Summer is a time of mixed emotions. My cells seem to vibrate faster in the summer, its a season that I deeply love but can also find quite overwhelming. As the world seems to speed up around us, it feels natural to race around and want to be here and there all at once.

@joyaberrow photo, direction and edit 

@cleodberry model and assistant 

@dorotheaforrester camcorder operator & photography 

What’s the first sign of summer where you are? That one thing that signals the changing of the seasons and the sweet beginning of longer, warmer days?


Its always the plants that seem to guide us through spring into summer, so many of them bluebells, dandelions, cow-parsley, elderflower, oxeye daisies, meadowsweet.

As the hedgerows transform plants come and go and remind me of where we are in the seasons. Wildflower meadows come and go in June, buzzing with life, colours, textures. The moment we know it is peak summer is when we can stay on the beach late at night and often we sleep there to mark the moment.

Summer food can be picked fresh from the trees, its sun-ripeness can be smelled before it is tasted, its abundance can make al fresco dinners go on for hours, and its colours make street markets come alive.

What are the flavours of your summer? The tastes that transport you? 


Flavours of summer would have to be crunchy fresh home-grown vegetables from the market garden. Lettuce picked fresh from a plant, broad bean tips, tomatoes in the poly tunnel. Fresh tomato salad always reminds me of summer!

"Nowhere to be, just an open horizon and space to go in whatever direction I please."

Tell us about your perfect summer day – where are you going, what are you doing, and who are you with? What does it feel like?


Favourite kind of day is probably; nowhere to be, just an open horizon and space to go in whatever direction I please. Time at the lake, followed by time in the garden and down to the beach for sunset swims and dinner.

Walking the cliff paths is great for getting perspective and the hills in Dorset get the blood pumping. In mid summer the pebbles that make up our beaches heat up so when you arrive you can lay down on the hot rocks.

"Plants teach me to let go in a way ... they can feel fleeting and there is always next year. "

Smell can be so transportative and often takes us back to a time or a memory. Tell us about the one scent that defines your summer.


The one scent that defines the start of summer to me is elderflower, it comes in June and really reminds me that everything great comes and goes so to relax into what happens.

Plants teach me to let go in a way, because they can feel fleeting and there is always next year.

Summer means different things to all of us depending on where and who we are. What makes your summer uniquely yours?


Long warm evenings on the beach, in the garden. Movement, joy, spontaneity. Adventure, in and out of water, cooking on fire, sweating when gardening and waking up on the earth.