Available as Paperback, eBook, Downloadable audio
From the founder of Noughticulture, Rootbound explores how a whole new generation are discovering the power of plants
‘Breathtakingly beautiful’ i
‘Tender and wholehearted’ Helen Jukes
LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES, I and GARDENS ILLUSTRATED
When she suddenly finds herself uprooted, heartbroken, grieving and living out of a suitcase in her late twenties, Alice Vincent begins planting seeds. She nurtures pot plants and vines on windowsills and draining boards, filling her many temporary London homes with green. As the months pass, and with each unfurling petal and budding leaf, she begins to come back to life.
Mixing memoir, botanical history and biography, Rootbound examines how bringing a little bit of the outside in can help us find our feet in a world spinning far too fast.
“Breathtakingly beautiful writing about the natural world … Vincent’s championing of female gardeners from eras past is both cheering and fascinating … Rootbound is a story of growth”
i
See more reviews
“This memoir has the potential to be the millennials’ answer to Eat Pray Love”
daily Telegraph
”Rootbound is a poignant testimony to the joy that greenery will bring to your life, and it is a magical reminder that humans, like plants, can mend and grow in their own good time”
independent
“Reading this book is like breathing fresh spring air. Rootbound is achingly honest and earthily good, a beautiful hymn to wild hope, strength and tenderness, in nature and in ourselves. I loved it”
Charlotte Runcie Author Of Salt On Your Tongue
“A book about heartbreak, salvation, nature and balcony gardens … Alice Vincent mixes memoir with botanical history to explore how plants can heal us”
huffington Post
Alice Vincent
Alice Vincent is Features Editor at Penguin Books, having previously worked as a writer and editor on the arts desk of the Telegraph. After teaching herself to garden in 2014, Alice started to share her adventures in urban gardening through Noughticulture, a newsletter and Instagram account, as well as in a column for the Telegraph. She has since written for Gardener’s World and Gardens Illustrated, appeared on Gardeners’ Question Time, collaborated with Hunter, Finery, Monsoon and Seedlip, among others, and hosts workshops and a YouTube channel for Patch Plants. Her first book, How To Grow Stuff, was published in 2017. Rootbound was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She lives in South London.
@noughticulture | @alice_emily
20 Best Books of 2020
‘I’m sure many of us have sought solace and healing from the wonders of the living world during the anxious months of lockdown. This past year has been a golden one for nature writing … The most affecting book for me, though, was Rootbound: Rewilding a Life in which Alice Vincent, a champion of urban gardening who founded Noughticulture, delivered a poignant testimony to the joy and hope greenery brings to your life.’
Martin Chilton
Independent
‘If we re-frame lockdown as an opportunity to hibernate until spring, things begin to look a little less bleak … Look closer and you will see hope: green tips of spring bulbs pushing determinedly through the ground; the sugary pink and heady hit of viburnum, sarcococca and daphne blossom; the swelling, fuzzy buds of magnolia. For the first time in my life, I’ve had the time to notice these little wonders.’
Alice Vincent, author of Rootbound discusses reframing the lockdown, and the unexpected joys found along the way.
Alice Vincent
The Independent
Alice Vincent’s life fell apart in her mid-twenties. Uprooted & heartbroken, living out of a suitcase in London, she sought out the nurturing power of plants to find her feet in a world spinning far too fast. Rootbound: Rewilding a Life is out on Thursday.
