Rebecca Solnit uses the roses George Orwell planted in 1936 as a portal into the writer's life, politics, and relationship with the natural world. Solnit, herself a writer known for walking and attention to place, discovers that Orwell was an avid gardener whose passion for nature grounded his political commitment. She traces the roses from their planting through their survival to the present, using them to explore what sustains political hope through dark times. The book weaves together Orwell's biography, Solnit's meditations on roses and gardens, investigations into the history of coal and colonialism, and reflections on what beauty and pleasure have to do with justice. Solnit challenges the assumption that political commitment requires renouncing aesthetic pleasure, arguing instead that love of beauty can motivate the fight against what degrades and destroys. She examines Orwell's time in the Spanish Civil War, his illness with tuberculosis, and his writing of 1984 and Animal Farm in light of his gardening and nature writing. The book is itself a kind of garden, cultivating unexpected connections between political theory and horticultural practice, between colonial extraction and domestic cultivation. Solnit's associative style creates a meditation on what it means to plant for the future while facing an uncertain present.