Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival

Product Information

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.

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. These days, Alice Vincent has breached her thirties and everything has changed since she wrote Rootbound. Married, moved to a house, a home and as importantly, a garden. But with these changes, new questions arise...questions around womanhood, motherhood and how not to lose oneself in all what society seems to ask and expect. 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:

Over the course of 14 months I spoke with 45 women, ranging in age from 22 to 82, from the depths of Somerset to the remote, salty horizons of Danish islands. Some were single, some were married, some were widowed, some were imprisoned, some were immigrants, some were artists, some never spoke about their day job, some were mothers, some wanted to be. I met with them with the intention of research: I wanted to glean and tell the stories of the soil that were conspicuously absent from gardening narrative, many of which would inform a book, Why Women Grow. What I ended up with was not only that connection I’d been missing, but a host of new friends I didn’t know I needed. 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.’ 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 Loneliness strikes at different times in life. The Campaign to End Loneliness, which has been publishing reports for over a decade, claims that more than 3 million people in the UK would describe themselves as chronically lonely, a state in which someone feels lonely most of the time. Nearly half of British adults, of all ages, attest to loneliness at least some of the time, with older and widowed people particularly affected. A stunning meditation on why women are drawn to the soil, featuring contributions from Ali Smith, Hazel Gardiner and Cosey Fanni Tutti.

This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is available from all good book shops. When I was confident we could meet socially, or off-the-record, we embarked on that all-too-rare thing in adult life – a new friendship. There’s Diana, now 84, whom I see most weeks, cycling to her house for lunches of posh leftovers served on green plates, often with wine. Despite the 50-year age gap we share a predilection for astrology, inventive outerwear and composting. After interviewing Hazel, a floral designer in her 40s, a box of bright pink biscuits spelling out “BRING ON THE BARBICAN” arrived on my doorstep – we’d spoken about our mutual love of the brutalist estate and hatched a plan to sit in Nigel Dunnett’s Beech Gardens together. We ended up chatting for so long we made ourselves late for our subsequent plans. Several glorious dinners, catch-ups and voice notes later, I invited her to my wedding. 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. The creative mind behind Hill House Vintage and author of Hill House Living, Paula Sutton is a stylist, writer and - perhaps most of all - a purveyor of joy. After navigating a career in the fast-paced and glamorous world of fashion magazines, Paula relocated from the streets of South London to Hill House, an idyllic Georgian home in Norfolk 12 years ago. There, she decided that she was going to live - and raise her three young children - with a focus on what made her happy. Gardening is something that she has discovered later in life but has, she explains, become a crucial part of living in a more meaningful way.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. 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? When I wanted to know why women turned to the earth, I thought about some of the reasons. I thought about grief and retreat. I thought about motherhood and creativity. I also thought about the ground as a place of political change, of the inherent politics of what it is to be a woman, to be in a body that has been othered, dismissed and fetishised for millennia. I thought about the women who see the earth as an opportunity for progress and protest. 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. 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.