You Are What You Grow

About the Book: 

Based on her hit Allotment Tales column for "The Scotsman and New Consumer Magazine", Antonia Swinson - the First Lady of the allotment - shares, not only her tips for gardening and allotment management, but also the effect of her time spent in the mud.

Written with humour and vim You Are What You Grow is her extraordinary original vision of how the world ticks. Scything down the caricature of the allotmenteer, this is a social and political critique from an allotmenteer's point of view.

Antonia explores issues such as the history of British land ownership, organic produce and self-sufficiency, community building and the psychological benefits to be found by allotmenteering. The work is divided by season with gardening tips, money saving ideas and promotion of healthy, and organic food.

 
Reviews: 

More a lively account of her musings over a year spent in her plot than a practical guide to growing radishes, but gives food for thought, as well as for the plate. THE SUNDAY TIMES

You Are What You Grow, Antonia Swinson's charming and amusing essays on our relationship with the earth, allotments and food and her reflections on our relationships with the land are the ideal accompaniment to Shakespeare, taking us out of our fuggy living rooms and into the reality that Shakespeare faced on his yearly returns to Stratford. THE GUIDE

Biographical Note:

ANTONIA SWINSON iis a critically acclaimed writer and award-winning business journalist. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh she enjoyed a successful early career on Fleet Street, and for three years was tv critic on the Daily Express. Antonia moved with her family back to Edinburgh in the mid-1990s and for six years wrote a popular business column for Scotland on Sunday. She began writing about her allotment in 2001 for New Consumer magazine, and her ‘Allotment Tales’ have been appearing in The Scotsman since 2004. A former Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland, Antonia is the author of three novels and one book on business ethics, the highly influential Root of All Evil?