BOOK REVIEW
Why Women Grow By Alice Vincent
In a quest to better understand her own future, Vincent unearths the many fascinating stories of women and their gardens, why they garden and how they make time for themselves when they are given so many other responsibilities.
She visits women from all across the UK, in the nooks and crannies of London, to the far flung hills of Wales and Scotland. There is even a brief venture across to Denmark. From there, she’s led through their garden and their lives, appreciating how each person has come to find solace in growing, be it food or flowers.
Through thoughtful, intimate vignettes of individuals, Vincent explores how each is trying to make a place for themselves among the jostle of life and expectation.
She opens up the door to the rich diversity in gardening as well. Vincent introduces us to women who use it as a form of revolution, carving space for themselves, all the while looking at plants and the origin of our interest in them.
There is a lot about the meaning of motherhood in here as well. Not just the easy parallel of growing garden, growing belly, but all kinds of motherhood: of miscarriage, of stillbirth, of having no mothers, or having no chance to become one, of having no time to be anything other than mother, and all the many different types there can be.
Vincent’s writing is an evocative, eloquent, garden of language, and it is easy to become swept up in the language as much as the stories.
This is an intimate look at Vincent’s mind. On the cusp of new changes, new roles are thrust on her, as they are often thrust on many women. She grapples with ideas of motherhood, the domesticity of home, and carefully unpacks what they mean to her through each encounter.
Women Who Grow is an ideal book that feels like a stroll through the garden of female experience, pausing here and there to take deeper breaths, to admire and to taste.
Even if you aren’t an avid gardener, the slow, thoughtful exploration with Vincent will linger. Take your time. Savour and feel the love of the garden grow.