All My Wild Mothers: Motherhood, Loss and an Apothecary Garden by Victoria Bennett

All My Wild Mothers is an intimate memoir of motherhood, a handbook on survival, and a testimony to radical hope. Weaving personal testimony and herbal folklore, Victoria Bennett tells a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do.

Struggling with the demands of motherhood, grief and full-time care, Victoria and her family move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria. In the rubble of a former industrial estate, she and her young son begin to grow a wild apothecary garden: daisy, for resilience; dandelion, for strength against adversity; sow thistle, to lift melancholy, and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times. Stone by stone, seed by seed, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it.