Healing foods

If you want to stay fit and healthy the key lies in growing your own fruit and vegetables, according the author of Grow Your Own Pharmacy, Linda Gray

Manager of a popular gardening website, Grandmother Linda Gray is a firm believer in home-grown food for a healthy mind, body and spirit. And she should know. Thirteen years ago Linda took her three youngest children to rural France, looking for the ideal place to live.

Linda explains: 'Before I had a family, I worked in banking, although I was always keen to be an interior designer. I put my efforts into exterior design in the end, building dry stone walls and terracing the land, which was far more physical than an interior design career would have been.

'Along with my wish to be a stay-at-home mum to my four children, I had a desire to improve my domestic skills and to feed my family on the best food I could possibly lay my hands on.

'In London, back in the recession years, that was getting more and more difficult. So as a family we decided to up roots and travel through France and England, with the idea of teaching the children different ways of life and how to survive using their instincts should the need ever arise.'

After looking at a number of different properties and regions, they found an acre of land, long since forgotten about, and very overgrown.

Linda continues: 'The area was close enough to get back to the UK if we needed to, although we didn't for about four years, when my eldest daughter had her first child in England.

'With no running water and no electricity the going wasn't easy to start with, but water was connected within a couple of weeks and although electricity didn't arrive for another 18 months, it was appreciated when it did. Washing by hand for two adults and three children is not much fun after the novelty wears off, which it does, very quickly!'