After working as an assistant in botany at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she and her mother (also named Anna Bateson) campaigned for women's suffrage, she moved to New Milton, Hampshire and set up a pioneering market gardening business.
She was educated at home and at a day school in Cambridge, apart from a year spent in Karlsruhe, Germany.
[2] She published papers on turgescent pith and on geotropism, both solo and as co-author with Francis Darwin and with her brother.
with her mother and with Millicent Fawcett and Kathleen Lyttelton, of the Cambridge Women’s Suffrage Association.
[7][6] She was noted as an early woman professional in the field of market gardening, with some sources stating that she was Britain's first.