The Pinterest Garden
Why women grow review and the Pinterest farming aesthetic.
Why Women Grow by Alice Vincent is a fantastic book. This nonfiction book is focused on interviews the author conducted shortly after Covid with women about their relationship with gardening. Throughout two years, she interviews all kinds of women and through their conversations, many themes bubble up like motherhood, family, loss, and the custodianship of care which is often taken on by women in different ways throughout their lives.
It’s a powerfully reflective book which left a lasting impact on me. Alice’s work always has. For one, her name looks so similar to my Mum’s I think it’s a book my Mum has written directly for me. There is also an extra personal layer as she often writes about parts of London I know so well. In particular, Dulwich, where my sister lived for over a decade, and parts of South London where I was born and my Mum lived the majority of her life in.
Why Women Grow also had that same serendipity as her first book, Rootbound, with a particular interviewee being in a village in Wales which is exactly where my boyfriend’s family lives. Regardless of the personal impact, these stories make me feel like I’m listening to a friend explore some beautiful things. A friend regale lessons learned from wise women all over. Through these stories, there are links and connections between the women, the author, and me.
I don’t garden. Let me get that clear, but I love gardens and I really want to garden.
I live in a flat at the moment, a home I love and is all we can afford but one day I hope I will have a garden. I grew up with a Mum who spent every moment she could out in the garden. We used to have to run out and get her in the summer as we wanted dinner. Something I now look back on sadly, as I wish I cooked more to allow her to enjoy her summer evenings.
I grew up understanding the magic of growing. I would pick sweet peas in the summer and pull wonky crude carrots out of the ground. When I’d have my first teenage breakups Mum would drag my miserable self out into the garden with her and do some weeding.
She took up volunteering at a Walled Garden one year when I was quite young and it has become a magic place for us as a family to go and visit. A beautiful manor kitchen garden, that was left to disrepair after the gardeners left for WW1 and sadly never returned. Through her years volunteering with a fantastic team we watched the space transform, overgrown beds returned to rainbow spectacles. I loved this space so much I even made a photobook about it!
Like many people, I lust after the soil without currently getting stuck in it. I have a Pinterest board full of beautiful homestead aesthetics. I watch YouTube vlogs on homesteaders across the world, it’s something I dream of but I weigh up its reality. It's an awful lot of work and it requires a huge amount of skill. And often, it requires two willing participants. At the beginning of this year, my friend rented a fancy house for her 30th Birthday. She threw a Skins-esque party where we all dressed up and partied for the weekend. This incredible Airbnb was so beautiful, a beautiful old hotel, in the middle of the countryside surrounded by fields and a farm or two, we were left to roam and have fun. The grand old house was filled with vintage heels and quirky art in every corner, it was well-loved but the garden was something else. The trees were magic. Winding paths wrapped around them and offered new delights around every corner like a meadow of wild garlic and a quiet bistro spot with a disco ball chandelier above you.
I walked around the paths with my friend on our last morning there and spoke about something like this being a dream of mine but one that I would have to maintain on my own. I’m aware that my boyfriend wouldn’t be joining in, in the caretaking of a space like this. I’d be solo. He’s an inside guy. And that’s fine with me as that is his path. I’ve never had an outside guy but after reading Why Women Grow, I don’t think I need one. When we walked around this garden, my friend told me that I’d be fine looking after a place like this. People, singularly, are more capable than we think. Since leaving that magical place and reading Alice’s new book I do feel more capable.
Having a homestead or a green space is hard work but it is often a women’s way to be a lone ranger. It is often the gardener’s path. Out there with the soil and the patience to watch a space grow. To be a custodian of the land and develop your own relationship with the time you are privileged enough to get. There is a beauty in the patience required to maintain land. To watch it change and grow in its own way. In a way that is not intended. In a way that only a gardener can understand.
One day, if things work out, I will have my little corner. I will be pulling wonky carrots out of the ground and digging out potatoes for my Christmas dinner. I’ll be cutting my own sweet peas and finding a way to ward the slugs off my precious dahlias. And all I need is myself and some determination.
That’s my future, but for now, I’ll start with the weed-filled flower pot by my front door.