Alice Vincent presents a beguiling bouquet in Rootbound: Rewilding A Life, her hopeful memoir of self-discovery and horticulture
Rootbound: Rewilding A Life
Alice Vincent Canongate £14.99
Heartbreak can be the best teacher, as arts journalist Alice Vincent learns in her hopeful memoir of self-discovery and horticulture.
By her mid-20s, Vincent was living every millennial’s idyll: she had a job that paid her to go to Glastonbury, Instagram-worthy holidays and, together with boyfriend Josh, even managed to pull off the impossible and become a London homeowner.
Then Josh dumps her.
Despite a country childhood, Alice Vincent (above) is largely ‘plant-blind’, and the journey from drowning Lidl herbs to germinating her own sweet peas is tentative
It’s the sight of poppies in bloom that hauls her out of some serious moping. ‘Those poppies felt like a tiny miracle, a reminder that nature keeps going regardless,’ she writes. Over the coming year, she gardens her way back to happiness, rooting herself in life’s eternal cycle of growing, flowering, seeding.
Despite a country childhood, Vincent is largely ‘plant-blind’, and the journey from drowning Lidl herbs to germinating her own sweet peas is tentative.
She doesn’t actually have a garden but her windowsill fills with tomato and chilli seedlings, and out on her narrow balcony a mystery plant, rescued from her late grandpa’s greenhouse and coaxed back to life, rewards her with ‘a heartstopping display of apricot and raspberry and peach; a Barratt Fruit Salad of a flower’.
As a writer, Vincent has a taste for flamboyant, sincere poeticism. Even the pesky blackfly that colonise her nasturtiums seem like ‘charcoal smears in the fireplace’. A little like one of those invasive non-native species, this can overwhelm the narrative’s more intimate sections.
And for a book about rewilding, albeit on a personal level, there’s a striking lack of environmental awareness.
Eventually, her heartache soothed by a new love interest, she finds that the unpredictability of gardening has tempered her need for control, while its leisurely rhythms instil patience.
All the same, it takes her a while to own up to her new hobby. Gardening seems ‘strange and dowdy’, she confesses, the word itself ‘fuddy-duddy’.
As it turns out, she is actually an early adopter: soon, all the trendiest shops are stocking terrariums, prompting soulful reflections on her generation’s relationship with the natural world. These she splices with insights into 18th-century botanomania, pioneering women plant-importers, and the surprisingly long history of guerrilla gardening.
All in all, it’s a beguiling bouquet whose vibrancy feels extra welcome as the first green shoots of spring start to show.