How a Subscription Perfume Brand Is Reviving Folk Traditions

The little British perfume house that supports giants, gardeners and Morris dancing with its annual award 

Owen Mears and Emily Cameron have long been fascinated by the rhythm of the natural world. The siblings grew up in a Somerset village in rural Britain as neighbors to a biodynamic herb garden. Their early years were scented by the seasonally changing plants. This was a big inspiration for Ffern, the scent brand they launched in 2018. Ffern is unique – a subscription-only perfume house that releases four, small-batch seasonal fragrances each year on the equinox and the solstice. Once the scent has sold out, it’s gone for good. And if you want to buy their perfume you have to join the waiting list. There’s currently a queue for the Spring 26 scent – a mix of petitgrain, timut pepper, broom and tuberose – which will be launched on the spring equinox.

Last year, Mears and Cameron started a new project to honor the cycle of British life – the Ffern Folk Foundation. This trust endows an award worth £50,000 to organizations and collectives bringing folk traditions to new generations, as the siblings believe that traditions, celebrations and folk art bring us closer to the natural world. The Ffern Folk Foundation wants to bring these rituals to the modern world to make sure they endure.

The inaugural award went to Boss Morris, a spectacular all-female Morris dancing side based in Stroud. But for the 2026 award, announced this month, four groups received an equal share of the pot. There’s the Black British Folk Collective (BBFC), a folk club that celebrates the work of B-POC musicians. There’s also The Lost Giants, a group which is reestablishing the art of community giant building, when locals create puppets and models of mythical creatures for seasonal rituals. Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD), an agricultural community group which helps city-based people explore nature through gardening, is the third winner and the final award goes to Flossy and Boo, an early years Welsh theatre company which creates interactive, bilingual Welsh and English plays for young children about the Welsh natural world. 

“Awards like this are so important. The Ffern Folk Foundation is not only recognizing the value of work that happens at a grass roots level, it’s actively nurturing that work and helping it to flourish.”

Black British Folk Collective

MUD and Flossy and Boo will use the award funding to extend their offering. MUD plans to lay on workshops and Flossy and Boo will put on a new production. 

With their prize money, the BBFC is going to hold the first ever folk club for Black, Brown and Global Majority people in the U.K. The collective – founded by musicians and activists Marcus MacDonald, Bianca Wilson and Angeline Morrison – also has a folk festival planned for later this year which will include art workshops, folk dance, folk medicine and food growing workshops. “Awards like this are so important,” says Morrison. “The Ffern Folk Foundation is not only recognizing the value of work that happens at a grass roots level, it’s actively nurturing that work and helping it to flourish.”

Designer and illustrator Amy Webb is one of the co-founders of The Lost Giants. She says the group is delighted with the Folk Foundation award. 

“Our work is rooted in community, land and living folk tradition, and Ffern’s support allows us to deepen that — researching lost histories and sharing skills,’ she says. “It gives us the time and support to follow the centuries-old, scattered threads of giant-making across Britain and share these stories more widely. Most of all, it opens the door for more people to get involved and keep our craft heritage alive, helping folk tradition evolve to meet the needs of the time we are living in.”

Ffern’s Emily Cameron says: “Folk can bring another perspective to the way we live our lives – fostering communities, deepening our understanding of the land and firing up our imaginations. Our cohort for 2026 are doing all of this and more.”

Image courtesy of Ffern Folk Foundation.