From Gardens Where We Feel Secure

Susanna Grant, Rowan Spray

• Publisher: Rough Trade Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781912722983
• eBook ISBN:
  9781914236020
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Botany
• Index: Biological Sciences

From Gardens Where We Feel Secure is gardener and writer Susanna Grant's exploration of her thinking on history, value and meaning of nature in the city. Examining the premise that naming species allows us to expand our understanding, our interest, our ways of looking at the world around us, and the idea of plant-blindness—our tendency not to see what we can't name in the nature that surrounds us—she throws a spotlight on five of her favourite wildflowers with accompanying images by photographer Rowan Spray. These stories are interspersed with reflections on Grant's own countryside childhood and her work in London's community gardens: why we can't walk where we want to, planting as an act of resistance and, above all, the necessity of weeds and their beauty.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• 1. Hortus Conclusus
• 2. “Humans can only recognise (visually) what they already know.”—Elisabeth Schussler
• 3. ‘There were 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2018-19. That’s 30 per cent of children, or nine for every class of 30.’—Ian Hamilton Finlay (cpag.org.uk)
• 4. “When all felt tumultuous, the rhythms of nature gradually became a siren call, offering steadiness I couldn’t grasp elsewhere.’’ —Alice Vincent, Rootbound: Rewilding a Life