Episode 241: Wild Mothers

This week’s episode, my guest is writer Victoria Bennett, author of'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’. The book weaves memoir and herbal folklore and is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do. Daisy, for resilience. Dandelion, for strength against adversity. Borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times…

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Box tree moth

What We Talk About 

What is an apothecary garden?

How Victoria learnt about gardening and herbalism

The garden Victoria and her son built in their new house

Dealing with the challenges thrown up by neighbours and housing associations

Some of the most powerfully useful plants Victoria has grown

How Victoria’s mother influenced her gardening aesthetic

Victoria and her son’s next joint gardening adventures

About 'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’

The book was published earlier this year with Two Roads Books. An intimate weaving of memoir and herbal folklore, it is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do. Daisy, for resilience. Dandelion, for strength against adversity. Borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.

Victoria says, “faced with a life very different to what I thought it would be; deep in grief following the tragic death of my eldest sister, facing financial difficulties, and caring for my young son who was diagnosed at age 2 with Type One diabetes, I decided to see what could grow on the barren land of the former industrial site over which our new social housing home was built. With my son, I began to grow, relying on the weeds that were under our feet and the things that other people threw out or eradicated from their pristine gardens.

Stone by stone, seed by seed, my son and I turned the rubble into a wild, healing garden. As we did, we discovered that sometimes what grows does so, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it.”

Links

Victoria’s website

'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’ by Victoria Bennett

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Grounding Roots with Lulah Ellender

Darwin’s Garden with Dr Jude Piesse

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