Episode 192: Garden Roots

This week I’m speaking to gardener and writer Lulah Ellender about her book Grounding: Finding Home in a Garden. Lulah’s book is about tuning into the unceasing rhythms of nature in order to live with uncertainty and how they can help us become more connected to the places in which we live. We talk about how gardens can root us in time and place, even when those roots seem tenuous and liable to break.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Sentient bugs

What we cover

The premise behind the book and the circumstances in which Lulah came to write it

How Lulah gardened differently when she thought she might lose her garden

Why the potential loss of her garden seemed such a wrench

Custodianship of gardens 

Advantages to being a temporary, more tenuous occupier of a space

How do gardens help us cope with our emotions? How do they help us make sense of cycles of life, death, birth, aging?

About Lulah Ellender

Lulah lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with her husband, four children and assorted animals. She has written for the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine, and Sussex Life among others. She was recently writer in residence at Charleston’s Festival of the Garden. Her first book Elisabeth’s Lists was published in 2018. 

Links

Grounding: Finding Home in a Garden by Lulah Ellender - Granta Books, April 2022

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