When life gives us lemons, we make lemonade. But what if we didn't wait to be handed lemons? What if we grew them ourselves? Imagine planting your own seeds in your own garden, nourishing them with your own sweat and love, and then - literally! - picking the fruits of your labor. In this case, a juicy, sun-drenched lemon. What better symbol of your self-sufficiency? No wonder a new wave of feminine feminists sees gardening as a beautiful way to be self-sufficient, while restoring the garden to its original function: a cross between a pharmacy and a grocery store. Take 'urban food grower' Claire Ratinon who grows produce for Ottolenghi and wrote the perfectly titled 'How to grow your dinner without leaving the house'. 'A gateway to better mental and physical health', she calls gardening, following in the feisty footsteps of the formidable Frances Wolseley (1872 - 1936). This Victorian gardener opened a school for female gardeners in 1903; the first technical college for women. Long before 'empowering' was even a thing, that's exactly what Frances did: empowering women through gardening, by letting them taste the pleasure of nurturing a seed into a plant that ends up on your plate. It's exactly what we are craving right now: the juicy kind of self-sufficiency that makes even a lemon taste sweet.

"The work of a garden bears visible fruits -
in a world where most of our labors seem suspiciously meaningless."
- Pam Brown