Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival

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The history of horticulture has often overlooked the contribution made by women, and this book offers a timely antidote" We’re very excited to welcome Alice Vincent, writer and Maya Thomas, herbologist, chef and writer for a talk on the book ‘Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival’, 2023.

I love hearing from Carole, who grew up on the estate behind my Brixton flat in the 70s, and has the best stories to tell. Sometimes I bump into her in the neighbourhood while she’s on one of her sprawling south London walks; sometimes I pass her equipment or plants for her community gardens. Every time, it feels like I’m part of a community I didn’t previously know existed. I regularly meet Elaine, an artist on the cusp of her 60s, for an outdoor sandwich, following the first spontaneous picnic we shared that she pulled, Mary Poppins-like, from her bag years before. She’s lived a remarkable and inherently feminist life, giving women’s voices space in her work. The last time I saw her, she gave me a flower press she’d made from old table mats that belonged to her mother.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.

Alice Vincent delves into what it is that makes women want to garden, uncovering what drives the urge to sow seeds and nurture plants, and by doing so goes on her own journey of discovery" 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?Wise, curious and sensitive, Why Women Grow follows Alice in her search for answers, with inquisitive fronds reaching and curling around the intimate anecdotes of others. Alice Vincent is a writer. Her books include Rootbound: Rewilding a Life (which was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize and named as a book of the year by the FT and the Independent) and the forthcoming Why Women Grow. A columnist for Gardens Illustrated, Alice writes for The FT, The New Statesman, Vogue, The Guardian, The Telegraph and other titles, and is the features editor of Penguin.co.uk and the creator of @noughticulture. Nurturing life from neglected spaces yields a good deal more than homegrown peas. Marchelle, a Cambridge scholar originally from Trinidad, was lured to buy her house in Somerset by the siren song of stream that changes according to where you stand in the garden. Tending it makes her feel “mothered” now she is so far from her family. In a similar vein, 21-year-old Mel countered solitude as an outsider in her village. “I do think loneliness goes with being indoors … In the garden, there’s always some noise … it would be hard to dwell on that feeling if you’re outside.” I did skim through the last third of the book, as after a while I started wondering why it still felt like the author was saying the same exact things that she was at the beginning, and why it still felt like I was reading the introduction of a work rather than unraveling the core of it.