How to capture the sound of something humans can’t hear? How to make a song about a mushroom? That was the challenge put to Scottish musician, Hannah Read, in the wake of her father’s death. Hannah, who lives in California, fell into an earthy world of mycelium in 2020, and her album, The Fungi Sessions, captures a growing fascination with fungi in through beautiful folk music.

We were fortunate enough to catch Hannah while she was in her Edinburgh hometown before she went on a UK Tour. At the city’s Botanic Gardens, she told us about falling in love with music on the Isle of Eigg, her relationship with the landscape and what she’s learned from the earth - as well as treating us to an al fresco performance. 

To find our more information, tour dates and join Hannah's mailing list, head to Hannahread.com. Sign up to her Bandcamp to listen to and buy her music. All of Hannah’s music is streamable on all platforms. She's on Instagram @hanread and Facebook: /hannahreadmusic.

Use code WWGSPRING at ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

Today we are on an adventure - to the sticky, secret depths of Wales’s peatlands. This intriguing landscape could be the answer to the climate crisis, but it also hold so many stories in its mysterious history. One artist who is trying to unravel them is Manon Awst, whose art, performance and poetry explores how peat bogs can teach us how to live in ways that are more connected with the earth we depend on.

Manon is a Welsh artist who explores how we connect to more-than-human environments - what we notice, what we miss, and how our coexistence might flourish. When we visit her, on a freezing early January day at Crymlyn Bog, outside of Swansea, she opens our eyes to the power and potential of these incredible landscapes - before breaking through the ice to go beneath their surface.

Manon's Future Wales Fellowship and creative work on peatlands is supported by Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales. To learn more about the Fellowship and her peaty practice check out www.manonawst.com or @manon_awst on Instagram.

Use code WWGSPRING at ⁠Crocus.co.uk⁠'s checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

As Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy explain in our first Earthly Matters episode, people come for the flowers but they stay for the soil. Since forming their company, The Land Gardeners, in 2011, they have combined their cut flower-growing and landscape design businesses with a mission that fuels them on a daily basis: researching the earth beneath our feet to better understand how to repair the soil that feeds nearly everything we build our existence upon.

Their work has seen them transform unloved gardens and agricultural plots into hives of thriving, promising productivity - and Henrietta and Bridget are always looking towards the techniques that the less courageous will take years to deploy. This year, their insight is being shared in a major exhibition at Somerset House, called Soil: The World at Our Feet. 

Amid drifts of snowdrops in the garden of Henrietta’s Cornish home, we spoke about how The Land Gardeners’ persistent commitment to soil health has taken them all over the world, learning, speaking and spreading the secrets of soil. 

Use code WWGSPRING at Crocus.co.uk's checkout to save 20% on full priced plants. The code is valid until 11.59pm on May 30th, 2025, It is valid when you spend a minimum of £50 on full priced plants and / or bulbs. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other codes or offers.

Introducing Earthly Matters

A new season of Why Women Grow is coming soon - and this time, we’re getting dirty.

After two years of celebrating the bold and the beautiful, we’re back - and we’re going under the surface to explore what lies beneath.

In Earthly Matters, the first of four brand new miniseries for this year, we’ll be exploring the powerful possibilities of soil, peatlands and fungi with some incredible women. And we can’t wait for you to dive in with us.

Join me, Alice Vincent, for all-new episodes of the Why Women Grow podcast, launching on the 25th February.

Floral designer and broadcaster Hazel Gardiner has been part of the Why Women Grow sisterhood long before we hit record: she was the first woman I interviewed for the book. I’d been aware of Hazel’s distinctive approach to floristry and her advocacy for diversity and inclusivity in horticulture for some time. But when I learned of how gardening had helped her when she was undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer, I realised how deep and unique her relationship to the earth was. 

We celebrated the Why Women Grow exhibition at the Garden Museum earlier this year by recording our first ever live episode with Hazel. Do check her out on Instagram, @hazelgardinerdesign. We’re so grateful to the Garden Museum for hosting the episode and the Why Women Grow exhibition. 
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. 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 @⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠.

The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She’s a rare example of someone who straddles the world of academic science and indigenous teaching; by crossing the gulf between the two, she’s transformed how people understand the outside world. Her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, is a remarkable example of wisdom that thrives on being passed on: it took seven years to land in the New York Times' bestseller list, then stayed there for months.

Robin lives in Upstate New York, but when she was in the UK earlier this summer I had the privilege of spending some time with her. Taking her to one of the oldest medicinal gardens in the world, the Chelsea Physic Garden, to record this conversation, was one of the highlights of my career. 

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. 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 @⁠alicevincentwrites⁠.

The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.  

Chef and bestselling author Anna Jones has inspired the way hundreds of thousands of people cook for years - and we were delighted to be invited into her courtyard garden in East London for this episode of Why Women Grow.

Anna won’t profess to being a great gardener but her approach to food extends far beyond the kitchen. She works with edible flowers, seasonal produce and has written whole books about cooking in a more environmentally conscious way. Anna spoke about how she navigates the world through her senses, what her garden has held and how she has learned to grow there.

A big thank you to Anna Jones. Anna’s delectable new book, Easy Wins, is out now. We're grateful to our partners at Crocus for making this episode happen. Use code WWG20 to get 20% off plants and products on their website until October 31.

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. 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 @⁠alicevincentwrites⁠.

The Why Women Grow podcast is produced by Holly Fisher, and theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro.  

Why Women Grow is back with a new mini series, featuring three women who have fundamentally changed how I think and live. This summer's mini series features the chef and bestselling author Anna Jones, botanist and Braiding Sweetgrass writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and floral designer Hazel Gardiner.

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.