The forgotten garden that inspired Charles Darwin becomes the modern-day setting for an exploration of memory, family, and the legacy of genius.

Darwin’s childhood garden at The Mount in Shrewsbury was the site of some of the great scientist’s earliest experiments. It was where, under the tutelage of his green-fingered mother and sisters, and the house’s knowledgeable gardeners, he first examined the reproductive life of flowers, collected birds’ eggs, and began to note down the ideas that would lead to his groundbreaking theory of evolution.

In The Ghost in the Garden, Jude Piesse uncovers the lost histories that inspired Darwin’s work and how his legacy, and the legacies of those around him, live on today.