While attending Oxford University, Owen Mears, the founder of Ffern, a natural-fragrance company, grew flowers and herbs in his dorm room, re-planting new ones every academic term to match the changing seasons. Mears, 29, missed Exmoor, the small Somerset town where he grew up. “It was like he was trying to re-create the countryside,” says Emily Cameron, 34, his older sister and Ffern’s creative director.
Mears didn’t understand how much he loved the olfactory experience of his home, which is near the first biodynamic herb farm in Europe, until he left for university, in 2012. “For Em and me, and for everyone in our village, it was overwhelmingly the case that we experienced nature through the sense of smell,” he says.
