The Apothecary by the Sea

With the years of early motherhood and elderly caregiving over, Victoria faces a time of change. She and her husband decide to take a leap, moving five hundred miles north of everything they know, to the northern Scottish islands of Orkney, where the winters are long and the summer a perpetual light.

Uprooted and in an unfamiliar landscape, Victoria instinctively returns to the small, quiet work of growing, setting out to transform her scrappy backyard into an apothecary garden by the sea, inspired by Orkney's folklore, ancient landscapes and wild nature.

Shaped by tides and storms, wild plants and seaweeds, she creates a biodiverse backyard sanctuary filled with micro-habitats, wildflowers, and apothecary herbs. Here she crafts teas, tinctures and balms inspired by the surrounding soil and seas.

As the year closes and the endless summer light turns once more to dark, Victoria finds belonging not just in the garden she has nurtured, but in the landscape that has quietly embraced her and called itself home. Here, at the wild edge of things, she is reclaiming parts of herself long set aside.