Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival

Product Information

This seems like something a 30 year old woman would write. Lots of talk about “becoming a woman” and longing for recently lost youth. Pondering that youth (over and over). Considering becoming a mother. Talking about how all your friends are becoming mothers. Lots of references to old heartbreak and few references to the fiancé living beside her in the house. How long ago was the last epic breakup? It might be time to keep that info in journals and let it go. In Rootbound, the author rekindles a long lost love for the outdoors and gardening, as she answers these questions as she goes along. A conversational odyssey from a Canary Wharf balcony to Charleston, the Bloomsbury set's hangout, and a windswept smallholding in Denmark. Why Women Grow is the splendid-looking account of these encounters. The narrative unfurls like a vagabond anthology of potted biographies, confessions jostling alongside social commentary [...] If you enjoy window-shopping other people's lives, you'll relish this staggeringly diverse array of individuals. Vincent's affection for her subject is infectious" 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.

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. I have always learned about plants through their stories: how they came here, what they represent, what silent powers they hold and who they mean something to. I have made my career as a storyteller: as a journalist, I have told stories daily for more than a decade. Now, I wanted to hear – perhaps even tell – these women’s stories. I wanted to learn more about what had driven these women to garden, perhaps to better understand my own need for the soil, perhaps to better understand what it was to be a woman. Why Women Grow is a much-needed exploration of why women turn to the earth, as gardeners, growers and custodians. This book emerged from a deeply rooted desire to share the stories of women who are silenced and overlooked. In doing so, Alice fosters connections with gardeners that unfurl into a tender exploration of women’s lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them, with conversations spanning creation and loss, celebration and grief, power, protest, identity and renaissance.

Supporters

We talk about everything, from motherhood, to gardening for a better planet and finding your place in the world. 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. 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" Anne is a Fellow of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, a Member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy, and a Member of the Ayurvedic Professionals Association. We are delighted to be hosting the official launch of garden writer Alice Vincent’s new book ‘Why Women Grow’, a major narrative exploration of the relationship between women and the soil. Ahead of the event on Tues 28 February, here is an exclusive extract from the book:

Once again I felt unmoored amid a sea of change I had no control over. Loneliness came at me in surprising ways – as anger and frustration and listlessness. Unable to forge ahead with a big night out or arrange an indulgent dinner party, I sat down and made a list of names: women whom I admired or was intrigued by, all of whom I wanted to meet. 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.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. Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Why Women Grow is Alice Vincent's much-needed exploration of why women turn to the earth, as gardeners, growers and custodians. Join us for a book talk and signing event celebrating Alice's new book Why Women Grow. There will be time for a 15 min Q&A at the end of the evening. Alice Vincent has written something wonderful. Why Women Grow is a book that not only presents us with the beauty of the earth but asks one of the most fundamental questions to the human condition: what does it mean to create? I loved the way she wrote about the ambivalent power of the maternal question . . . We need more books about women, wombs and our role in the world; Alice has done that with charm, humour and an impressive depth of knowledge.’ A beautiful meditation on the overlooked history of female gardeners, tracing how women have drawn strength and power from the natural world"