Hello and welcome to A Garden of One’s Own!
My name is Jessica and I’m a writer, home cook and farmer-in-training.
A Garden of One’s Own is an online writing project through which I will share my research and reflections around the relationship between women and gardening. This weekly newsletter will dig into the varied, important roles of the garden in the lives of women, from healer to provider to rebellion to muse.
This project borrows its title from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, originally published in 1929. I recently re-read the famous feminist essay and could not help but bring my context as a gardening enthusiast and first-generation female farmer to Woolf’s words. Woolf argues that, in order to write, women need time, education, a little money of their own and, of course, a room where they can collect their thoughts away from the demands of domestic life. What would time, education, a little money, and secure land mean for the women who make up nearly half of the global food system? What would it mean for the world?
These are just some of the questions that I hope to come closer to answering through this project. Along this journey, I also expect to encounter and discuss ideas such as horticultural therapy, eco-feminism, the relationship between writing and gardening and gender inequality in agriculture. Like Woolf, I will draw on historical accounts and literature to inform my writing, as well as interviews and my personal experience as an emerging female farmer.
Thank you for joining me. I hope you will find some inspiration in the stories told here!
Until next time,
Jess