The Ballast Seed

A Story of Motherhood, of Growing Up and Growing Plants

By: Rosie Kinchen

Narrated by: Sophie Roberts

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

The surprise of a second pregnancy, so soon after the birth of her first son, plunged Rosie into a despair that spiralled into deep depression. Terrified at the prospect of adding another child into her already precariously balanced life, Rosie was compelled to find a new way of living. She found herself instinctively drawn to the local parks and scraps of communal green spaces in her local south-east London neighbourhood, and to therapy via tending a hidden garden deep within the city. Interlaced with her responses to the travel journals of an eccentric 19th-century female botanist and adventurer, Rosie elegantly describes how these pockets of nature amidst the urban sprawl provided just enough to mend her broken spirit.

©2022 Rosie Kinchen (P)2022 Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Critic reviews

"I loved The Ballast Seed. I couldn't put it down. Beautiful and sad and hopeful all at once—luminous and lush, full of dirt, darkness, sun light and soft new growth. It's a story of vulnerability, persistence and the will to live. This is a memoir that will make you weep, then roll up your sleeves and plant the seeds of a new life." (Cal Flyn author of Islands of Abandonment)