Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival

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At her best Vincent captures a garden in its mid-October glory: “Masses of purple asters, the last of the scabious, nigella and salvias; one brave, bright purple foxglove clinging on five months after its siblings bloomed.” Elsewhere her writing veers into repetition. Few interviews deviate from generalisation into toothsome anecdote, and a meeting with Cosey Fanni Tutti of 1970s band Throbbing Gristle skitters by in a quote-free paragraph. Reading this book felt like finding a good amount of beautiful insights and reflections that got you excited, only to leave you feel extremely unsatisfied and wishing there was more (not in a good way), because it was all just left at aphorism booklet level, among a whole lot of other rather boring and unnecessary information. I wish there was less telling us about how she found these people and describing all the steps they took around their gardens and listing all the flowers they planted, and more diving deep into the concepts that were revealed. The description got redundant and after the first quarter of the book it just felt like empty rambling about things she already had said before, and honestly did not add anything valuable to the book at all. Gardening also summons up ghosts, whether recalling skills learnt at a grandparent’s heels, or, like Fernanda, coaxing a recalcitrant herb, shiso, from a windowbox, 29 storeys up, to regain a flavour left behind in Hong Kong. When Fiona reworked a corner of her garden to commemorate a stillborn child this process not only offered a sense of beauty and meaning, but its sheer dogged slowness mirrored the changing nature of grief in a way that steadied her.

I was nervous before every meeting. More than anything, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of these women, who shared their lives with a stranger, and trusted her with their stories. Often, I’d share myself too, talking through my thoughts and fears about getting married and having children more intimately with these women than I had with anybody else. Sometimes, after I switched the dictaphone off, we’d sit and share a more balanced conver­sation, where advice and wisdom were doled out with care – often towards me, as I sought out the experiences of women who had been through what I hadn’t. These women and the conversations I had with them helped me to see my life differently, but they also helped me to see my garden differently. Anne McIntyre has been in clinical practice working as a medical herbalist for over 40 years, having also trained as a remedial masseuse, aromatherapist, homeopath and counsellor. Anne runs her busy practice from Artemis House in the Cotswolds and for over 30 years she has incorporated Ayurvedic philosophy and medicine into her clinical practice, producing a unique integrated approach to the care of patients and prescription of herbs. Vincent sympathetically draws out the women who speak about loss, abusive relationships and racial prejudice [...] she brings women and their problems to life"

One simple concept, a million cookbooks sold: Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin recipe books have transformed dinner times around the country. But the writer and food stylist is also a keen amateur gardener, growing first on a balcony and, later, in a garden on a quiet street in leafy South London. Iyer’s adventures in growing food to eat collided with the arrival of her first child, and gardening has given her a new perspective on what it is to feed and nourish. We catch up with the author of India Express at home to discuss her strategies for raising enough aubergines to feed a crowd, and why she’ll always prefer to grow from seed. A beautiful meditation on the overlooked history of female gardeners, tracing how women have drawn strength and power from the natural world" Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Alice Vincent is on a quest to change that. To understand what encourages women to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sit upon their shoulders. To recover the histories that have been lost among the soil.

Bonus episode: Writer and novelist Jamaica Kincaid redefined garden writing with books such as My Garden (Book) and Among Flowers, as well as changing perspectives on the post-colonial experience through titles such as A Small Place and Lucy. We meet the Antiguan-American author in the halls of Charleston House, Sussex, where Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant made art, a home, and a life-long relationship. In a quiet moment away from Charleston’s Festival of the Garden, Jamaica tells us about how gardening sits alongside her writing practice, how she converses with her plants and what they teach her about mortality. One of those rare and special books that reminds you why, especially during trying times, you might suddenly find more joy in caring for a plant, or seeing the turn of Spring. Highly recommended!" Kayla, eking out the last months of her sentence in an open prison, cannot see her children due to Covid, but finds solace restoring glasshouses to grow tropical plants for city millennials. Vincent notes the pricey blow-dry of a woman whose overgrown plant Kayla capably splits in two before admonishing her to clean the pot. The message is clear: purpose restores pride and hope. So she turns to women all around the country...women with different stories, all separated by time, space, upbringing and personal history, but all connected by two similarities: their awareness of their own womanhood and the love of their gardens and green spaces.The history of horticulture has often overlooked the contribution made by women, and this book offers a timely antidote" Don’t expect tips on mulching or how to sweet-talk your dahlias. Vincent bills herself an explorer not expert, keener on people than imparting techniques. Her last work, Rootbound, was a hybrid of heartache memoir and horticultural history. This time around the narrative unfurls like a vagabond anthology of potted biographies, confessions jostling alongside social commentary. Its driving question is what gardening reveals about female motivation. Above all, Vincent hoped to untangle her own ambivalence, as a freshly engaged thirtysomething, nervously eyeing up “heteronormative” marriage and motherhood, and troubled by her privilege in being able to garden at all. Could life lessons from strangers spur personal growth? Why Women Grow shows the beauty and grit of tending the soil in difficult times. Alice Vincent shows us that the cure for uncertainty is to get mud under our nails.’ KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering It’s definitely poetically written but it is wayyyy too inwardly focused. If she could use her writing talent to get out of her own head and experiences, this would have been a great book. I’m saddened by the perfunctory glances at very interesting women, overshadowed by Alice, Alice, Alice.