Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Garden

A beautiful memoir that shows how gardens can be a place to plant our most troubled feelings, to put down roots and to find peace -- KATHERINE MAY A tender book, raw in some parts . . . Farrell generously shows the reader the value of openness, considering what we have to learn from other people and species -- AMANDA THOMSON * * Times Literary Supplement * * Glistening . . . This book will change how we speak of gardens, land and identity in myriad ways. An exquisite love letter [and] a rallying call * * Irish Times * * Uprooting is a potent hymn to the importance of home and a deeply thoughtful offering on what our gardens can be -- ALICE VINCENT A wonderful book * * Financial Times * * Stunning . . . The power of [Farrell's] prose, her skilful observation and her uncanny ability to weave together science and spirituality comes alive in this memoir * * NB Magazine * * Emotive . . . [Farrell] uses her plot to as a lens from which to consider place, people and planet. At times universal, at other times, strikingly personal * * Gardens Illustrated * * Can the shifting sands upon which a diasporic life is built ever begin to settle? In her search for belonging, Farrell co-creates a garden and considers the wider cultural and political landscapes that have shaped her. A beautiful entanglement of soil and soul -- JINI REDDY Uprooting is at once tender and direct - as lyrical in its descriptions of home landscapes as it is scathing on the still-living legacies of colonisation. Farrell has given us a profoundly honest portrait of plants, place and the shifting of spirit wrought by migration -- JESSICA J LEE In this beautiful book, Marchelle Farrell excavates the troubled legacies of colonialism and her own uprooting as she brings her Somerset garden back to life. Over the course of a year she pours love into the depleted soil and is rewarded with an abundance - of plants, insights and friendships - and, most importantly, a sense of finding home -- LULAH ELLENDER