My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment

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'A tender but substantive family memoir' Sunday Independent

'An acute eye and a lightness of touch ensures that this is never anything other than truly engrossing' The Field

A few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.

In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.

This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.

Author Bio

Award winning freelance photographer, filmmaker and writer Lalage Snow spent the best part of her professional life covering conflict in Afghanistan, The Middle East and Ukraine. Her personal projects have been published and exhibited to critical acclaim around the world and have been featured on Channel 4 and the BBC, in The Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph newspapers and exhibited at the V&A and Smithsonian galleries. Her first book, War Gardens: A Journey Through Conflict in Search of Calm, explores the conflicts of the twenty-first century through the eyes of civilians using gardening as a means of survival. Lalage Snow now lives in the west country with her family. And a multitude of seedlings.