In this essay, we analyse Leone Contini’s work Foreign Farmers which was created for Manifesta 12 and installed in the Botanical Garden of Palermo, Italy. It consisted of a vegetable garden comprising different plant species not native to Italy, whose seeds were gifted to the artist by migrant gardeners based in different parts of Italy. Contini’s work addresses the disconnection between human communities and the land as a result of displacement. In this text, we analyse Contini’s piece through the lenses of decolonial ecology and the notion of Wasteocene. We consider this installation as a framework to propose a reflection on how unexpected generative ecologies sparked by adaptation are the result of migration in the midst of anthropogenic global warming. By subverting the extractive logic of colonialism, the work questions dominant narratives and power structures that shape society. Furthermore, by extending Sharpe’s metaphor to contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean and the shipment of toxic waste in former colonies, we want to propose an observation of how migrants are subject to ‘the wake’ of colonial violence. The routes once travelled by colonial vessels directed towards the shores of Africa are now the itineraries of the ‘barconi’ floating adrift in the sea, trying to reach the coasts of Southern Europe.