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.