Orkney Garden Heals Writer After Loss and Illness
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- Victoria Bennett moved to Orkney in 2022 at age 51 with her husband and 14-year-old son, buying a Victorian terrace on an archipelago of more than 70 islands off Scotland's north coast.
- Bennett turned her 9 sq metre walled back garden into an apothecary garden with a central circular spiral bed of medicinal herbs, a micro-woodland of goat willow, elder, wild garlic and bluebells, and a half-barrel pond of marsh marigold and water mint.
- The garden was wiped out twice in one year by salt-burn from sea winds, forcing Bennett to swap elderberries for hardier fuchsia berries and choose species she had seen thriving on the coastline — thrift, sea campion and roseroot.
- The move was prompted by the anniversary of Bennett's sister's drowning in a canoeing accident; on that day Bennett cried on the seashore and felt the islands "whisper" to her to return.
- Bennett, now 54, has hypermobile Ehlers Danlos syndrome and genetic haemochromatosis, and says learning to yield to the sea in her garden taught her to treat her body with more compassion and forgiveness.
- The Apothecary by the Sea publishes 30 April, extending Bennett's nature-writing practice after her 2023 book All My Wild Mothers won the Nautilus award for memoirs.
Why it matters: Bennett, whose 2023 memoir All My Wild Mothers won the Nautilus award, publishes The Apothecary by the Sea on 30 April, reframing her chronic illness (Ehlers Danlos syndrome, haemochromatosis) and her sister's drowning as conditions to yield to rather than overcome — a stance she says the garden itself taught her.
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