meet helen
A storyteller who is passionate about food, horticulture, and farming.
As farmer’s daughter Helen will always be a country girl at heart, but as a city dweller since the age of 17 she is driven to encourage more communities and families to grow their own and cook seasonally. Not to become self-sufficient, but to uncover the health and environmental benefits that come from gardening and cooking seasonally.
With a history of her own mental health matters for over 20 years, Helen has sought huge solace from her own green space and recognises the power that gardening and nature can have to help people both physically and mentally, something she champions daily.
Not a trained chef, Helen is a good old fashioned home cook with a degree in history specialising in European feminism! She married a rugby player who unsurprisingly, despite being retired, still has a very healthy appetite and, with three boys, a lot of time is spent as a family in the kitchen cooking and making a mess.
While also writing and keeping her family on the straight and narrow, she also hosts the podcast, Grow, Cook, Inspire, teaches children to garden, grow, cook and is a communications consultant for a wide range of clients in the gardening, food, and farming sector.
Grow Cook Inspire: The podcast
Beyond her written work, Helen has taken her love for storytelling into the world of podcasting. With gardening at its core, Grow, Cook, Inspire is a podcast which aims to inspire & educate. Helen interviews a wide range of guests from the world of horticulture, food and farming and shares all the latest news, views, trends and important issues worth talking about.
Guests have included Thomasina Miers, Gill Meller, Alice Vincent, Frances Tophill, Charles Dowding, Kim Stoddart and many more as well as lesser-known figures who are making a positive impact and have a story to tell.