Nature has not been my cure. It has been my inspiration, teacher and companion. I am not better, but I have never been alone.

These Envoys of Beauty is a carefully crafted compendium of essays in which Dr Anna Vaught explores her relationship with the natural world, how it feeds her imagination and has given her hope.

Growing up in a rural setting, and at times in extremis, nature was a centring power on Anna’s early years – wishing trees, talking streams – and she explores how an enduring love of foraging, a sensual consideration of how things smell, licking the rain from leaves, drinking, growing and cooking, has shaped her life.

Over the course of twelve essays, as herbs spill out and roots dig in, Anna’s relationship with the natural world becomes a lens for exploring themes of loneliness, depression and trauma, and she discusses how these great systems of healing and sustenance continue to exert their power decades later.