Where the Hornbeam Grows

Beth Lynch

'Beth Lynch's subtle and moving book is about the heart-work of finding and making a place for oneself in the world; the effort of putting down roots the pain of tearing them up again and how one grows to know another person or another landscape. Horticulture and human feelings twine together here - and what flourishes in the several gardens of this book is in the end hope' ROBERT MACFARLANE

'I loved Beth Lynch's tender wise meditation on grief home and the restorative magic of making a garden' OLIVIA LAING

Out of place and lonely after a relocation to Switzerland Beth Lynch realises that she needs to get her hands dirty if she is to put down roots. And so she sets about making herself at home in the way she knows best - by tending a garden growing things. The search for a garden takes her across the country through meadows and on mountain paths where familiar garden plants run wild to the rugged hills of the Swiss Jura where she begins to plant her paradise. WHERE THE HORNBEAM GROWS is a memoir about carrying a garden inwardly through loss dislocation and relocation about finding a sense of wellbeing in a green place of one's own and about the limits of paradise in a peopled world. It is a powerful exploration of how in nurturing a corner of the natural world we ourselves are nurtured.

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