Why Women Grow

Few Chelsea Flower Show gardens are designed by women. Fewer Chelsea Flower Show show gardens are created by the people they are intended for. And there has never before been a Chelsea Flower Show garden inspired by and made for female prisoners. But The Glasshouse Garden, garden designer Jo Thompson and founder of social enterprise The Glasshouse, Kali Hamerton-Stove, have done exactly that: created a show garden that breaks boundaries. Behind the duo's beautiful show garden, in the heart of the Chelsea Flower Showground, we were joined by Jo and Kali and a live audience for a special press day recording of this powerful conversation. You can find out more about The Glasshouse at theglasshouse.co.uk, or follow them on Instagram, @theglasshousebotanics. Jo Thompson can be found via her brilliant substack, The Gardening Mind, on Instagram @jothompsongarden. She's also the author of books including The New Romantic Garden and The Gardener's Palette.This podcast is inspired by my book, ⁠Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival⁠, which is available in all good bookshops. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by India Hobson on my website and instagram account @⁠⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠⁠.Use code WWGSUMMER at⁠ ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on August 31st, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.   

Some people move house for the location, some people move for the fireplaces: for Ula Maria, it was a neglected, overgrown garden in South London that confirmed her future home. The Lithuanian garden designer is arguably the most celebrated of her generation: Ula became the youngest person to ever win Best In Show at Chelsea in 2024 - and only the third woman to take the prize in the Flower Show's century-long history.But behind the scenes of a skyrocketing career, Ula was navigating considerable personal struggle and loss - and, all the while, she was building her own garden from that overgrown plot. It's here that we speak to her about all of it: her achievements, her designs, her life, and what it's actually like to be in the middle of a Monty Don media storm. Find out more about Ula's work on her website, ulamaria.com, and her instagram, @ulamariastudio. This podcast is inspired by my book, ⁠Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival⁠, which is available in all good bookshops. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by India Hobson on my website and instagram account @⁠⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠⁠.Use code WWGSUMMER at⁠ ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on August 31st, 2025. It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

Sarah Price is a landscape gardener who's always seemed to exist on another plane. Her designs work with the environment to create something that feels both otherworldly and of the earth. After undertaking a degree in Fine Art, Sarah went on to design gardens for the London Olympic Park, Manchester's Whitworth Gallery and a Maggie's Centre in Southampton. But she's also made some of the most remarkable - and memorable - gardens on the Chelsea Flower Show Main Avenue, winning two gold medals in the process. We meet Sarah in her garden at home in Abergavenny, Wales, which once belonged to her grandparents. As we walk the paths, streams and tunnels that she had played in as a child, Sarah tells us some of the stories that her garden has carried, how this precious and magical space informs her practice, and what we often overlook when we make gardens. Sarah Price can be found online, www.sarahpricelandscapes.com, and her instagram, @sarahpricelandscapes. She is supported by gardeners Keri Schofield, Jacky Mills and Ian Mannal; Rachel Seaton Lucas in her studio, and Crocus, who she has worked with since 2011.This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is available in all good bookshops. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by India Hobson on my website and instagram account @⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠.Use code WWGSUMMER at ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on August 31st, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

It's the biggest gardening show on earth - and this spring, the Why Women Grow podcast is finding out what it's really like to be a female designer at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. This is The Designers, our Spring miniseries, which has taken us from dappled shade of South London gardens to the foothills of Welsh mountains and straight to Main Avenue. We're troubling gardening's toughest glass ceiling - and learning about grief, joy, survival and creation on the way.  Join me, Alice Vincent, for all-new episodes of the Why Women Grow podcast, launching on the 20th May. 

How to capture the sound of something humans can't hear? How to make a song about a mushroom? That was the challenge put to Scottish musician, Hannah Read, in the wake of her father's death. Hannah, who lives in California, fell into an earthy world of mycelium in 2020, and her album, The Fungi Sessions, captures a growing fascination with fungi in through beautiful folk music.We were fortunate enough to catch Hannah while she was in her Edinburgh hometown before she went on a UK Tour. At the city's Botanic Gardens, she told us about falling in love with music on the Isle of Eigg, her relationship with the landscape and what she's learned from the earth - as well as treating us to an al fresco performance. To find our more information, tour dates and join Hannah's mailing list, head to Hannahread.com. Sign up to her Bandcamp to listen to and buy her music. All of Hannah's music is streamable on all platforms. She's on Instagram @hanread and Facebook: /hannahreadmusic.Use code WWGSPRING at ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

Today we are on an adventure - to the sticky, secret depths of Wales's peatlands. This intriguing landscape could be the answer to the climate crisis, but it also hold so many stories in its mysterious history. One artist who is trying to unravel them is Manon Awst, whose art, performance and poetry explores how peat bogs can teach us how to live in ways that are more connected with the earth we depend on.Manon is a Welsh artist who explores how we connect to more-than-human environments - what we notice, what we miss, and how our coexistence might flourish. When we visit her, on a freezing early January day at Crymlyn Bog, outside of Swansea, she opens our eyes to the power and potential of these incredible landscapes - before breaking through the ice to go beneath their surface.Manon's Future Wales Fellowship and creative work on peatlands is supported by Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales. To learn more about the Fellowship and her peaty practice check out www.manonawst.com or @manon_awst on Instagram.Use code WWGSPRING at ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

As Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy explain in our first Earthly Matters episode, people come for the flowers but they stay for the soil. Since forming their company, The Land Gardeners, in 2011, they have combined their cut flower-growing and landscape design businesses with a mission that fuels them on a daily basis: researching the earth beneath our feet to better understand how to repair the soil that feeds nearly everything we build our existence upon.Their work has seen them transform unloved gardens and agricultural plots into hives of thriving, promising productivity - and Henrietta and Bridget are always looking towards the techniques that the less courageous will take years to deploy. This year, their insight is being shared in a major exhibition at Somerset House, called Soil: The World at Our Feet. Amid drifts of snowdrops in the garden of Henrietta's Cornish home, we spoke about how The Land Gardeners' persistent commitment to soil health has taken them all over the world, learning, speaking and spreading the secrets of soil. Use code WWGSPRING at Crocus.co.uk's checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

Introducing Earthly MattersA new season of Why Women Grow is coming soon - and this time, we're getting dirty. After two years of celebrating the bold and the beautiful, we're back - and we're going under the surface to explore what lies beneath. In Earthly Matters, the first of four brand new miniseries for this year, we'll be exploring the powerful possibilities of soil, peatlands and fungi with some incredible women. And we can't wait for you to dive in with us. Join me, Alice Vincent, for all-new episodes of the Why Women Grow podcast, launching on the 25th February.

Floral designer and broadcaster Hazel Gardiner has been part of the Why Women Grow sisterhood long before we hit record: she was the first woman I interviewed for the book. I'd been aware of Hazel's distinctive approach to floristry and her advocacy for diversity and inclusivity in horticulture for some time. But when I learned of how gardening had helped her when she was undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer, I realised how deep and unique her relationship to the earth was.  We celebrated the Why Women Grow exhibition at the Garden Museum earlier this year by recording our first ever live episode with Hazel. Do check her out on Instagram, @hazelgardinerdesign. We're so grateful to the Garden Museum for hosting the episode and the Why Women Grow exhibition. This podcast is inspired by my book,⁠⁠ Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival⁠⁠, which is available from all good book shops.   The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She's a rare example of someone who straddles the world of academic science and indigenous teaching; by crossing the gulf between the two, she's transformed how people understand the outside world. Her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, is a remarkable example of wisdom that thrives on being passed on: it took seven years to land in the New York Times' bestseller list, then stayed there for months. Robin lives in Upstate New York, but when she was in the UK earlier this summer I had the privilege of spending some time with her. Taking her to one of the oldest medicinal gardens in the world, the Chelsea Physic Garden, to record this conversation, was one of the highlights of my career.  This podcast is inspired by my book,⁠ Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival⁠, which is available from all good book shops.   The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @⁠alicevincentwrites⁠. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.  

Chef and bestselling author Anna Jones has inspired the way hundreds of thousands of people cook for years - and we were delighted to be invited into her courtyard garden in East London for this episode of Why Women Grow. Anna won't profess to being a great gardener but her approach to food extends far beyond the kitchen. She works with edible flowers, seasonal produce and has written whole books about cooking in a more environmentally conscious way. Anna spoke about how she navigates the world through her senses, what her garden has held and how she has learned to grow there. A big thank you to Anna Jones. Anna's delectable new book, Easy Wins, is out now. We're grateful to our partners at Crocus for making this episode happen. Use code WWG20 to get 20% off plants and products on their website until October 31. This podcast is inspired by my book,⁠ Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival⁠, which is available from all good book shops.   The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @⁠alicevincentwrites⁠. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.  

Why Women Grow is back with a new mini series, featuring three women who have fundamentally changed how I think and live. This summer's mini series features the chef and bestselling author Anna Jones, botanist and Braiding Sweetgrass writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and floral designer Hazel Gardiner.

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.  This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is available from all good book shops.   The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to Canongate and Uprooting, by Marchelle Farrell, for supporting this episode. We are grateful to our hosts at Charleston House and to Hollie Fernandes for her beautiful photographs of Jamaica Kincaid taken there. 

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. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

Margaret Howell has been designing men's and womenswear for five decades, prioritising understated quality over trends: she makes beautiful clothes that work well. Fifty years after she started to design and sell clothes from her home in Blackheath, South London, there are now 80 Margaret Howell stores across the globe, from Paris to Tokyo, and she has been appointed a CBE for services to the retail industry. Margaret has been inspired by the natural world since childhood, citing the impact of growing up in a family that gardened and her fathers' workwear as influences on her work. I love Margaret's aesthetic, from her stores to her shirts, and was intrigued to see how this approach translated to her garden. So in this episode we visit Margaret at her home - still in Blackheath - to talk about how and why she grows. On a late spring afternoon we are immersed in the green haven that is her back garden, where Margaret works with nature, rather than against it. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

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. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

Sally Vickers is a Jungian psychotherapist and the author of books such as Miss Garnet's Angel, The Other Side of You and, most recently, The Gardener. The daughter of two communists, Salley was a teacher before she retrained as a psychotherapist, and her writing delves into the stuff that makes us human. She is also a keen gardener, especially at her country home in Wiltshire. In the midst of the downpours that broke England's heatwave last summer, we met Salley at Kew Gardens, a place that has held meaning for her from childhood, through raising her children and now, as a woman who fosters a close relationship with her grandchildren. Inside Kew's steamy Temperate House, we reflected on memory, motherhood and places that make us. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and the theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. This episode features additional music by Zion, Salmon Like the Fish. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my Instagram account, @noughticulture.

If you've ever bought plants or seeds online, or through mail order, you've probably encountered Sarah Raven. The gardener, writer and teacher is also a nursery-owner and businesswoman, developing, trialling and selling plants to Britain's home gardeners. Over the course of three decades and seven books, including A Year Full of Flowers, Sarah has changed how British gardens grow, ushering bold colours and flavourful fruit and veg into our homes and kitchens. Today we're heading to her home and working nursery at Perch Hill in East Sussex in late summer to talk about how gardening has shaped Sarah's life and career. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

Claire Ratinon is a food-grower, speaker and writer. In 2022, she released Unearthed, a powerful memoir about understanding what it is to become a custodian of the earth as a Black woman, and how the process of doing so helped her gain a sense of belonging in a post-colonial country. In 2012 Claire was working as a documentary producer in New York when she stumbled upon Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in the middle of the city. Having always felt alienated from nature, she embarked upon a journey with growing food that changed her life. Since then, Claire has worked on organic growing sites in London and the English countryside, growing produce to sell to the city's restaurants. Today we visit her garden in East Sussex, where she grows things including the food of her Mauritian heritage. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

Poppy Okotcha describes herself as an ecological home grower working to inspire reconnection to the land and the living world through the story of food and herbs. She came to gardening after a shift in her personal life: having moved between the UK and South Africa during her childhood, Poppy had a career as a model. When she was left burnt out by the fashion industry, she began to cultivate a slower kind of life, growing organically on top of a canal boat in London and learning about biodynamic and regenerative growing. We were invited into her magical, Tardis-like garden in South Devon, where Poppy tends to a space that has been grown on for centuries, sharing her gentle stewardship of the land with her considerable social media platform. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

Introducing the line-up for the first season of Why Women Grow: writer Claire Ratinon designer Margaret Howell chef Rukmini Iyer gardening gamechanger Sarah Raven novelist Salley Vickers environmentalist Poppy Okotcha and stylist and influencer Paula Sutton We talk about everything, from motherhood, to gardening for a better planet and finding your place in the world. The first season kicks off on February 13, with episodes from the gardens and brains of Claire Ratinon and Sarah Raven. Make sure you subscribe to Why Women Grow, from wherever you usually download your podcasts, to be among the first to get it. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.

The first listen of the forthcoming Why Women Grow podcast, launching February 2023 from Alice Vincent. This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is out on March 2nd and available to pre-order now. The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. Thank you to our partners at Seedlip. We've also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by Siobhan Watts on my instagram account @noughticulture.