Book Review

The Ballast Seed: A moving memoir of parenthood, depression and the therapeutic power of plants

An unexpected pregnancy and subsequent crisis threw journalist Rosie Kinchen’s life into disarray, from which she emerged after discovering the simple pleasures of horticulture

Writer Rosie Kinchen discovered that in being able to fix things that were damaged, to rescue ailing plants and dig into the earth to position new life, gave her a perspective on her own troubles

Timing, they say, is everything in life – and for Rosie Kinchen, the timing of the arrival of her second child, just two years after her first, could not have signalled a more dramatic change in her circumstances.

A sense of despair is the first emotion that percolates through Kinchen’s heartfelt memoir, that emotion surfacing when, as the happy mother of a baby, partner to P, and employee at a newspaper, she discovers she is ...