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

by Marchelle Farrell

What is home?

It’s a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. A longed-for career in psychiatry saw her leave behind the pristine beaches and emerald hills of Trinidad. Until, disillusioned, she uprooted again, this time for the peaceful English countryside.

The only Black woman in her village, Marchelle hopes to grow a new life. But when a worldwide pandemic and a global racial reckoning collide, the upheaval of colonialism that has led her to this place begins to be unearthed. Is this really home? And can she ever feel truly grounded here?

Drawn to her new garden, Marchelle begins to examine this complex and emotional question through the psychotherapeutic lens of her work. As her relationship with the garden deepens, she discovers that her two conflicting identities are far more intertwined than she had realised.

Full of hope and healing, Uprooting is a book about finding home where we least expect it, and which invites us to reconnect to the land – and ourselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir, Gardening, Race, Travel, British Literature

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 3, 2023

Reviews

[BookOfCinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply moving, personal, and sensory….

Marchelle Farrell takes us on a unique journey through her garden and in the writing of the Uprooting . We are taken to the English countryside where she and her family are settling down. Marcelle is a Black woman who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, so moving to this all white countryside is an “uprooting” in many ways and Marcelle showcases that through the use of personal stories and her gardening. We find out about her process of gardening and how the different cycles impacts her, and her family.

I hear Marcelle read from her book and talk about it at BOCAS Lit Festival and I was intrigued about how she used gardening to frame her stories about her life. As someone who can’t keep a plant alive, needless to say, I have no interest in a gardening but Marcelle did an exceptional job of tying in the beauty of it.

I enjoyed how meandering the book is, how the author threw in different stories about her life in Trinidad and Tobago, how it shaped her. We read about the island, colonialism, her being a Black woman and navigating life in London.

This is a beautiful book that deserves more eyes.

P.S. If you love gardening, you’ll enjoy this one.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Nan Shepherd Prize-winning memoir shares Chan’s attention to pandemic-era restrictions and how they prompt ruminations about identity and belonging. Farrell is from Trinidad but came to the UK as a student and has stayed, working as a psychiatrist and then becoming a wife and mother. Just before Covid hit, she moved to the outskirts of Bath and started rejuvenating her home’s large and neglected garden. Under thematic headings that also correspond to the four seasons, chapters are named after different plants she discovered or deliberately cultivated. The peace she finds in her garden helps her to preserve her mental health even though, with the deaths of George Floyd and so many other Black people, she is always painfully aware of her fragile status as a woman of colour, and sometimes feels trapped in the confining routines of homeschooling. I enjoyed the exploration of postcolonial family history and the descriptions of landscapes large and small but often found Farrell’s metaphors and psychological connections obvious or strained.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Lydia Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profoundly beautiful book, following the seasons of the year as the author begins gardening and building connection with the land in their Somerset cottage. Explores the intricacies of racism, colonialism, and belonging with fierce tenderness. 5 stars!!

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, evocative, reflective and deeply personal…. and unputdownable!

I am so grateful to @Canongatebooks for sending me an ARC of Uprooting, by Marchelle Farrell. This, her debut novel, jumped off the screen with its vibrant cover and intrigued me by its premise of searching for home. It is just as vibrant inside.

Marchelle uproots herself from Trinidad, where she was born and raised, to study in England. Encouraged by her parents to go out into the world to build a life and put down her own roots, Marchelle becomes a Consultant Medical Psychotherapist. Married and living in a city, she still longs to find a place to call home and hopes to find it in a classic English cottage in a perfect English village.

Throughout the book, she reflects on her discoveries after moving in. What lies beneath these beds, borders and hedgerows? Over the course of a year, we live alongside Marchelle as she navigates her way through the seasons. We gain an insight into her own self-discovery as she struggles to find her place in this new landscape. With memories of her childhood garden in Trinidad triggered by similarities in plants growing in her own, she wonders if indeed she should return. Are they calling her back? Can we only truly belong where we were born and raised?

This is also the year when Covid hits the world and we cannot even leave our homes, let alone the country. Marchelle is suddenly faced with homeschooling, shortages and confinement. However, it is also an opportunity to get to know her garden, to build a relationship with its inhabitants and consider its potential.

Sadly, it is also the year of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in America and all the fallout which follows. It is a reminder of Marchelle’s family and their ancestors’ subjugation during colonialism, the fallout from which is still deeply embedded. She rages in her garden and cries into the soil…

And yet Marchelle’s inner struggle to find home is to be greatly admired in the face of such uprooting. I am in awe of her journey and how she beautifully intertwines the evolution of her garden with her own self-discovery.

It is at times also an unsettling – indeed uprooting – read for me as a white woman whose English roots run deep and uninterrupted. I feel a sense of shame in the atrocities of the past.

Predominantly, for me, this book is a triumph over the past. It sings to your soul how nature heals and nourishes, how plants can survive and are re-born, that the death of something is a necessary transition and how a garden can flourish harmoniously, regardless of where each species originated.

There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

‘Uprooting’ is a perennial, which will find its place permanently in my book garden – thank you for sharing your story, Marchelle @afroliage

Something Quick…

*Eloquently written
*Beautifully evocative
*Intelligent
*Rightfully unsettling
*Powerfully descriptive
*Thought-provoking
*Soul nourishing
*A reminder of the power of nature to heal

Get your gardening gloves on and go reconnect!

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Reading this while away from home was a bitter sweet reminder of how much I love the landscape of the UK, especially since this book is set so close to where I grew up.
I am firmly convinced in the restorative properties of nature, and to read such a poignant account of that first covid year through the yearly cycle in Farrell's garden only exemplified this for me. To slow down and be so in touch with the changes in weather and seasons makes the widening gap between humanity and nature so much more obvious! Just tied in so well with all the nature/eco reading I've been enjoying this year.

[Judith Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting book. I liked the combination of personal story, history of Trinidad and horticulture. Who knew that the classic English rose is from china? I think a non gardener would still enjoy the book but I think as a gardener you would enjoy it on a different level. The stunning cover grabbed my attention. I'm going to post this to my friend, another gardener who is a long way from the tropical garden that she grew up with as a child.

[Kat Heatherington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, tender, heartfelt and heart-rending. a story of a garden, a woman, the land, the long arc of colonialism on and within all of these, and a journey through them into healing, wholeness, and rewilding. i encountered Farrell's work first through Instagram, where I found her to be an articulate and thoughtful writer as well as a photographer of beautiful plants and places. In Uprooting, she has exceeded all my expectations. This book is poignant, strongly crafted, and so painfully, brilliantly true in every word and idea and and epiphany that it brought me to tears. It is everything I needed to hear for my own life right now, as well as a stunning work of art. Go read it, and rewild your self. You won't regret it.

[Ingrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

this wasn't entirely what I had expected, and beautiful though the writing is, it's a little too steeped in simile for my tastes. however, this book is an important discussion of identity, colonialism, racism, history and community, wrapped up in lovely flowery paper. I would recommend it as a gentle, tender nudge towards assessing your perspectives, acknowledging privilege, and encouraging your relationship with the natural world, as well as learning a thing or two about gardening along the way.

[Shan S · Rating 3 out of 5]

really enjoyed the cyclical story and wholeness of the ending

[Christine Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, with so much to stop and reflect on

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted this gem of a book by my father who happened to be friends with the author's parents but I honestly didn't know what to expect as I was not personally familiar with Marchelle or her writing. However, from the first page I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how beautiful Marchelle's writing was.
Thanks to her father, I was able to meet Marchelle and her family about two weeks ago while they were visiting Trinidad in a lovely picturesque place called Cafe Mariposa that interestingly enough she has spoken about in her book.

I would describe Uprooting as part memoir, part ode to Marcelle's love of gardening, part historical and part social commentary.
For me a book is well written when I'm engaged in a topic I normally would care nothing about(I hate gardening) and when it can carry me as far as even contemplating getting involved in said activity (who am I? Lol).

As I read about the author's life experiences juxtaposed against her gardening, I journeyed through memory lane with her recounts of the pandemic, felt my eyes watered at the kindness of her neighbors when she had a personal set back with her home and learned about a variety of flowers and plants( I was shocked to learn that most plants in Trinidad were not native to the country).

I loved how Marchelle was able to use the elements of nature to tell her personal story of life both in Trinidad and in England. One of the most unique books I have read.

If you love gardening, memoirs, history, or just descriptive and lyrical writing , you will enjoy this one.

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review: Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Garden – A Woman’s Journey of Belonging Through Soil and Memory

Marchelle Farrell’s Uprooting is a luminous meditation on displacement, healing, and the quiet power of cultivating place. Blending memoir, nature writing, and postcolonial reflection, Farrell traces her journey from the Caribbean to rural England, where an overgrown garden becomes both a mirror and a map—revealing fragmented identities while guiding her toward an uneasy, evolving sense of home. Written from the perspective of a Black woman, therapist, and mother, the book interrogates what it means to root oneself in a landscape steeped in colonial histories, yet tender enough to hold new growth.

Thesis and Framework: Gardening as Decolonial Practice
Farrell’s central argument is that gardening—often framed as a genteel, apolitical pastime—can be an act of reclamation for women of color. She dismantles the myth of the “English garden” as a neutral space, exposing its ties to empire and exclusion, while documenting how her own hands, shaped by Caribbean traditions, repurpose the soil for survival and joy. The garden emerges as a site of negotiation: between belonging and alienation, memory and reinvention. Her prose is particularly potent when contrasting the vibrant, communal horticulture of her Trinidadian upbringing with the solitary, structured rhythms of English gardening—a metaphor for the dissonance of diaspora.

Narrative Power: Earth as Archive and Confessor
The most arresting passages weave personal and ecological history. Farrell recounts planting yams and callaloo, crops tied to ancestral knowledge, alongside roses and lavender that symbolize her fraught embrace of Englishness. The land becomes a confidant for unspoken grief—miscarriage, racial isolation, the weight of motherhood in a foreign place. Her background as a therapist enriches these reflections; she frames digging, pruning, and composting as somatic rituals to process trauma. Notably, she avoids romanticizing nature, acknowledging the garden’s demands as relentless yet regenerative labor—mirroring the dual burdens carried by immigrant women.

Key Interventions
The Politics of Cultivation: Farrell exposes how colonial legacies persist in horticultural norms (e.g., “weeds” vs. “cultivated plants”) and reclaims agency by nurturing “unruly” Caribbean species in hostile soil.
Motherhood and Earth: She draws parallels between tending plants and raising Black children in predominantly white spaces, both acts of faith in futures she cannot fully control.
The Illusion of Permanence: The book challenges static notions of home, arguing that roots are not fixed but grown through repeated acts of care—watering, grieving, starting anew.

Gaps and Opportunities
While Farrell’s introspection is profound, the book could delve deeper into intersections of class and land ownership, particularly how race shapes access to rural spaces in England. Wider engagement with other diasporic gardeners might have enriched her exploration of collective resilience.

Verdict: 4.5/5
Uprooting is a seed of defiance and tenderness. Farrell’s writing—lyrical yet unflinching—invites readers to reconsider what it means to belong to a place that does not always belong to you. It’s essential reading for anyone navigating identity in liminal spaces, offering no easy answers but a toolkit of patience, curiosity, and the courage to plant anyway.

Why Women Should Read This:

Validates Invisible Labor: Honors the emotional and physical work women, especially immigrants, invest in making homes.
Reframes “Wilderness”: Challenges Eurocentric ideals of nature by centering Caribbean ecological wisdom.
A Manifesto for Imperfection: Celebrates the beauty of gardens (and lives) that refuse to conform.
Read This If: You’ve ever felt caught between worlds, or if you’ve sought solace in soil while grappling with the question: Can land that holds colonial ghosts also hold my healing? Farrell’s journey suggests the answer is messy, muddy, and magnificent.

[Martha.O.S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was a beautiful exploration of the author’s journey with her garden in the south of the UK, where she, with her young family, decide to put down roots just before the outbreak of the Coronavirus. It therefore becomes where they spend lockdown and becomes, for the author, her oasis, her place of calm in a world going crazy, a place where she finds home in its most personal sense and a place where home finds her.

Originally from Trinidad, Marchelle moved to the UK as a young student to study medicine and later psychiatry. As a Black woman, she has always struggled to feel a true sense of belonging, had met with racism or a sense of being ‘othered’ all her adult life and felt cut off from her beautiful childhood home, which was also not without its problems. Always aware of the colonialism in her country’s history and how this played into a sense of needing to prove oneself, her family ensured she had the best education and opportunity. However, Marchelle always struggled with the idea of needing to prove herself and had a lot of inner work to do to try to free herself from the generational burden that she inherited and the very real racism that she experienced at different times in her life.

This book which chronicles her journey with the garden she was drawn to, details beautifully the mammoth task of nurturing a wild space, of learning from it, of playing with it, of honouring the life of it and in short, of loving it. Every day, morning and night, she spends time just being outdoors, observing, interacting with her space, enjoying the holding it affords her and her young children. She has an immense knowledge of plants, their names, uses, history, appearance, yet very much claims to be out of her depth, to be an amateur. I loved that she felt her way into the garden, she didn’t impose herself or her desires on it, rather, she patiently waited, allowing things to develop as they would and carefully proceeded to become a co-creator, recognising that there was some more powerful force at work.

I loved how she connected the changing seasons in the garden to the seasons in our souls, how nature reflects life, and how the dark and barren time of winter is so necessary as it carries the promise of the life that Spring would usher forth. And I loved how she found healing in the garden, a peace and contentment not felt before. She uses metaphor beautifully, and is constantly making connections, drawing forth ideas as she sees them in the garden. Like the rainbow, the result of the dance of sun and rain together, we too must dance with pain and joy…”our broken uniqueness becomes our strength”

This book has inspired me so much, it is so rich in meaning, beautifully written and has shown me an approach to the garden based on awe, respect, gentleness and love.

[Minttu Hänninen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really lovely memoir that spans the course of a tumultuous year during COVID, when the author's family moves to a new countryside home and she starts tending the garden.

As an emigrant and someone who loves plants and is trying to find more of a connection with the natural world myself, I can relate to a lot of the themes addressed in this book. The search of home, belonging and community; being in between the two worlds of the country you grew up in and the country you are living in; connecting to traditional ways of knowing and being beyond modern science; how we can support healthy ecosystems; connection to nature, plants, the seasons, and all the various lessons we can learn from them if we just choose to listen. The idea of living in the countryside close to nature and away from the needless rush and disconnection of city life also speaks to me - I found it very moving when her family went to visit their summer house in the country and she found that she no longer missed that break from her daily life with the same level of desperation as before, as she had found peace in her everyday. I hope I can find that state someday, too.

This book explores these topics and many more (such as racism, colonial history, struggles with health/fertility, family history, parenthood, the demands of working life/taking a career break, the shared but isolating experience of COVID) tenderly and in poetic prose, connecting it all to the author's experience growing her garden and rooting down in a new home. The book is a beautiful and intimate view into the author's thoughts and experience of healing through finding home and connecting to the earth, and I really enjoyed reading it.

[Lucy Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a compelling read. The protagonist (from Trinidad, with a career in psychiatry in the UK) finds that the process of creating her new garden in Somerset is the medium in which she can explore her personal pain and trauma of colonisation, empire and slavery. As such it is a deeply personal and political book, using plants, earth and gardening as metaphors for much of her experience. It is set in the time of covid - 2020/21 - and so many will be able to identify with this backdrop to the fear and sense of isolation which Marchelle explores.
As a white UK reader I found this an emotionally challenging book because we can't undo the damage our predecessors have done. But I was relieved that the protagonist (I am assuming this is autobiographical and that the author is writing about her experience) found resolution in her garden including a path towards healing, finding her identity and a feeling of belonging - and that her white British husband, her children and the local villagers were part of that.
It is a book about how present personal unhappiness can be the legacy of historic trauma, but it is also about hope and finding self love and acceptance.

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uprooting is unlike anything I've ever read before. It is a beautiful, humble and entertaining reflection on gardening and the author's relationship with her English country garden as a Black Caribbean immigrant. But more than that, it is an astute and insightful reflection on history, humanity, our relationship with nature and each other. The author's background as a psychotherapist is evident in her observations of the human world around her, but her wisdom feels deeper and more profound, the result of an observant, creative, deeply sensitive, sometimes wryly humorous soul exploring her connection to the more than human world and trying to make sense of how exquisite and awful that connection can be.

Uprooting is the kind of book that you will read again and again, gathering its gorgeous pearls of wisdom close and carrying them with you.

[Adele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read only half of this book. I agreed with the author’s assessment of our Government’s shoddy response to the pandemic & found it refreshing to hear her views, especially considering her partner’s job in the health service. Unfortunately her descriptions of tending her new garden as a novice gardener & her responses to the challenges of bringing up young children didn’t appeal to me & seemed too repetitive. If I was a young mother, I think I could have been more appreciative. As someone closer to retirement with grown up children & being the lucky owner of a garden for decades, this wasn’t for me.

[Chris Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored reading this deep and gentle account of inner turmoil and determination to settle. The self-reflection is intimate, sometimes unexpected, and is rooted in the soil, the stream, the mud and the plants of the author's new garden. The intensity of anger at the way in which colonialism robbed the author of her authentic lineage, and corrupted even the flowers that, as a child, she had assumed were genuinely native to the Caribbean, is palpable.

Above all, in a book that is necessarily slow-moving, the lyrical language kept me rapt throughout, keenly seeking the odd few minutes when I could read a bit more.

[JA Condie]

DNF since it had to go back to the library. Not sure if I’ll borrow it again though. I found the early chapters discordantly negative and somewhat stress inducing. The author was supposedly living her dream life in a beautiful and welcoming place. And yet she spends pages moaning about garden plants not growing. DURING THE WINTER. I told myself her unreasonable negativity may have been an expression of mental turmoil she was unable to overtly express… but I just found it grating. I wanted to love this book - it sounded interesting and inspiring - but sadly, I did not.

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved listening to the audio read by Marchelle herself. This is a beautifully written, moving and powerful memoir. The nature writing and sense of place are a joy to read. Marchelle has shared some honest truths including the impact of the covid pandemic on her family and her experiences of moving to a small rural English village. There is so much history woven in too, particularly around colonialism and its links to violence, theft of land, theft of identity and how this links back to horticulture and gardening through a western lens. A wonderful book that I'll be recommending a lot.

[Aimee Missen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for class. I loved the layout of the chapters and how they followed the seasons. The focus on growing plants was fascinating, especially when paired with the psychoanalytic exploration of the author’s psyche. This memoir was poignant as it reckoned with the aftermath of imperialism on individuals and how to find a home in a displaced body. I wonder where all of my garden’s plants came from.

[art · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
The most beautiful memoir I’ve read in a while and the perfect read to end my summer with whilst transitioning into autumn. Very insightful and reflective. So happy to have discovered this work of masterpiece with a central focus on nature and key aspects of life. This book is a love letter to nature and the perfect read for those who love gardening. It’s also explores racism and what it’s like being black in a white society and a journey of self identity and image. It’s about the idea of home and a sense of belonging, full of hope and a beautiful journey of healing. Highly recommend 💜

Thanksyou Canongatebooks for an arc of this masterpiece

[Anne Polet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book, very much resonated with me, and I’m sure many others. The beauty of the garden, permitting wildness not just in the garden but in us, allowing ourselves to reconnect with nature, the wheel of the year, our natural cycles. Exploring our roots and connectedness. Essential we are all one, we try and tame nature, but we need to work with it, allow it. ♥️♥️

[Beverley Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like poetry. However the stories the author tells of her family from Trinadad, her racial identity. How plants and flowers effected her growing up and how gardening has helped her grow mentally and physically healthy after while she and her family survive the pandemic in a new house. Really enjoyed it.

[carliereadsstuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful and poignant memoirs of a year in a garden I have ever read. Open, soft and vulnerable, this book is an important exploration of the often overlooked political dimension of gardening.

[Scarlett Close · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book in Toppings Bath - picked it up for the lovely cover but bought it for the first paragraph. I connected with it instantly and its grounding in nature and loved each step of the journey.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. A thought-provoking read. I could picture myself in the scenes throughout. The connections to gardening and finding a sense of place were big reasons why I was drawn into this book. I think it will be worth reading again to see if/how my perspectives change.

[Lauren Csaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir. She lost me in some of the metaphors, and I found myself wanting more stories rather than philosophical rhapsodies, but overall it was lovely

[Julesdesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving account of finding belonging and oneself through the garden

[Pauline Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book with so much feeling.