The Promise

A girl hardened by the harsh urban environment that surrounds her is transformed into a guerrilla gardener by the resulting from a mugging. The burgeoning wildlife opens up people's hearts and minds and the girl moves on to multiply the magic. In spare poetic prose Nicola Davies has fashioned a variation on the myth of the Green Man for a modern age. Laura Carlin has drawn absorbing grey and brown cityscapes that gradually become permeated with brightly coloured birds and flowers as the girl plants 'among rubble, ruins and rusty railings, by train tracks, tramlines and traffic lights'.