All My Wild Mothers - Victoria Bennett

Motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden

An intimate weaving of memoir and herbal folklore, ALL MY WILD MOTHERS is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that happens when we do.

When the impact of grief, motherhood, and illness force a move to a new build social housing estate in rural Cumbria, Victoria and her young son set about transforming the rubble of the former brownfield site into a wild, apothecary garden. With no money and only the weeds they can find for free, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it.

In contrast to nature writing that shares stories of wild spaces and far off places, ALL MY WILD MOTHERS is rooted in the familiar and forgotten that lies beneath our feet. A memoir of motherhood, grief, and the archaic wisdom of plants, ALL MY WILD MOTHERS celebrates a simpler relationship to nature, accessible to all.

‘Family, community, soil and plants are nurtured together in this tender and moving memoir. Clear-eyed yet lyrical, Bennett shows us how grief and love, worry and delight, health and fragility move through each of our lives as inevitably as nature’s seasons of loss and renewal.’ Samantha Clark (author, The Clearing)