Interview | 05 March 2021

One of the lovely things about Grenson is that we get to meet a lot of interesting and creative people and we like to share them with you, our followers, as we hope you also find them interesting.

A few weeks ago we asked author, Alice Vincent if she would take part in our Off The Beaten Track series to find out about her passion for gardening. What turned out as a hobby has turned into a way of life for Alice. We asked her about her love of gardening, what got her started, a few questions about her area, how lockdown has changed things for her and some top tips on how to grow new life in a city.

Check out Alice's Instagram @noughticulture to see how she manages to grow some amazing things in the comfort of her own South London home with just a balcony to work with. We shot pictures of Alice near her home in the walled garden at Brockwell Park, one of her favourite local spots.

I write and read mostly, and garden in the bits in between. I’m inspired by the outdoors and by the words of others. My favourite things to do are enjoy food with loved ones, cycle and dance in the kitchen. Last year I released a nature memoir, Rootbound, Rewilding A Life.

I live in Brixton, South London. It’s a relatively recent move after spending several years in the South East of the City – not technically far away, but I was closer to wilder spaces before. I love the fact we can walk up to the city centre on a weekend, that New Covent Garden flower market is 10 minutes down the road and that, even though we’re firmly in the city, our garden is visited by birds and foxes.

Yolly, a florist in Forest Hill, has been delivering beautiful, seasonal and British-grown bunches throughout this turbulent year. Local bookshops Rye Books and Village Books kept us in reading material even when their doors had to close, and Sage, a florist shop in Peckham have set up Future Flowers, an incredible initiative that aims to diversify the floristry industry.

I’ve found cycling through the locked-down city an amazing, surreal and quietly beautiful way of remembering the oddity of this moment in our lives. If there were no restrictions, I’d hop on the Eurostar to Amsterdam, and potter around the brown cafes, having lazy mornings based around pancakes and spend the afternoons in the Hortus Botanic Garden.

I moved into a flat with a balcony that boasted a remarkable view of the city, and wanted to grow herbs to cook with. I killed them all within weeks (too much water, not enough drainage, a classic of the ouvre) but it was the start of a kind of addiction – I just kept growing whatever I could get my hands on. Usually trays of bedding plants from the supermarket, and things I thought were pretty from Columbia Road Flower Market.

Oh, so many things! I look out from my desk at the emergent bulbs of alliums, narcissus, honey garlic and fritillaria – the tulips will start to be seen soon. In the seed trays in my cold frame are poppies and sweet peas, along with other hardy annuals that will hopefully dazzle this summer. Inside the house salad bowls have been taken over by blooming irises and narcissus, and pelargoniums over winter on a vintage tea trolley in my lounge.

Pictured: Brockwell Park Walled Garden, London

It can be so easy to get bogged down in technicalities. I tend to tell people not to be afraid, and to just give it a go. My key pointer, however, would be that light is more important than how often you water. Work out how much daylight your space gets, and think about your plant palette accordingly – whether inside or out. That’s half the battle! Finally, let go of perfectionism: what you plant will rarely turn out how you imagine, that’s part of the magic.

Try visiting your nearest community garden! You’d be amazed at how many spaces rely on volunteers, and how little experience you need. It’s a great way to learn and garden on a far larger scale than a domestic plot. If you’d rather admire than get stuck in, challenge yourself to visit new green spaces in your local areas – there can be so many you might not have noticed before. Googlemaps can be quite good for showing where there are pockets of green in your neighbourhood that might be more easily passed by on the street.

Really depends on your space and light but I always recommend nasturtium seeds to beginners. They thrive in poor-quality soil, will put up with shade and the whole thing – plant, leaves, stem – is edible. I love them.

I have a handful of local nurseries that tend to be my first port of call. For specialist nurseries I like Beth Chatto, for their curation and collections, and Sarah Raven for inspiration. As for tools, I love Niwaki’s blades – there are none finer and they truly understand the importance and heritage of craftsmanship. Much like my wardrobe, I also rely on vintage or second-hand for pots, planters and things that can be upcycled: I eagerly await the delivery of some beautifully rusted planters from Tom’s Yard in Herefordshire, and a weathered water trough from eBay that I’ll be repurposing as a micropond.

While a lot of people picked things up, lockdown for me was an exercise in letting go. While I changed my 9-5 shortly before it (moving from being an arts editor at The Telegraph to features editor at Penguin.co.uk), for the past decade my life has been lived at a frenetic pace, juggling work, life and social commitments rather than balancing them in any meaningful kind of way. Lockdown forced me to re-assess. I have never slept more, or better. I have come to truly understand the benefits of having time to stretch out, rather than fill up. It’s also been great for my relationship – we got engaged in May, quite without fanfare, on the balcony of my own flat.

A difficult question but probably on a small boat, off the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean, eating freshly caught fish and countless local salads with pillowy soft bread. Salt on the skin, salt on the tongue.

-Withnail & I
-When Harry Met Sally
-Moonlight

-Who Knows Where The Time Goes, Sandy Denny and the Stawbs
-A Case of You, Joni Mitchell
-Dancing on My Own, Robyn

-The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
-Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
-Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

-Fortunately with Fi and Jane
-1619
-The Cut

– @fordeabbey
– @super_ordinarylife
– @haarkon_

The people I have and keep in my life. And my late-onset education in poaching eggs.