Recommendations from our site
“When I began writing—and planting—there was nothing but the newly sown grass and deep layers of rubble and waste in the garden. This barrenness and resistance of this ground expressed the grief I felt far more closely than a beautiful and pristine garden would have done. Even so, I wanted to see what could grow. It was a need really: to balance the repeated experience of loss with the persistence of life. I found that, with each plant that grew, I healed a little of that broken ground, both within myself and in the garden. In doing so, I discovered that it was the very imperfectness of the ground and the resilience of the wildflowers that made that growth possible…In this slow growing, the garden became a conversation, which is echoed in the structure of the book. It became a memoir in itself: recording memories of discovery, of time passing, childhood disappearing, my own ageing body, and the losses that I grieved.” Read more...
Victoria Bennett, Memoirist
