This Book is a Plant: How to Grow, Learn and Radically Engage with the Natural World by Eduardo Navarro

This Book is a Plant: How to Grow, Learn and Radically Engage with the Natural World Reviews

• 
  Rebecca

  This collection of new essays and excerpts from previously published volumes accompanies the upcoming Wellcome Collection exhibition Rooted Beings (a collaboration with La Casa Encendida, Madrid, it’s curated by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz and Emily Sargent and will run from 24 March to 29 August). The overarching theme is our connection with plants and fungi, and the ways in which they communicate. Some of the authors are known for their nature writing – there’s an excerpt from Merlin Sheldrake’s
  Entangled Life, Jessica J. Lee (author of
  Turning and
  Two Trees Make a Forest) contributes an essay on studying mosses, and a short section from Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass closes the book – while others are better known in other fields, like Susie Orbach and Abi Palmer (author of
  Sanatorium).
  
  I especially enjoyed novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s “Wilder Flowers,” which is about landscape painting, balcony gardening in pots, and what’s pretty versus what’s actually good for nature. (Wildflowers aren’t the panacea we are sometimes sold.) I was also interested to learn about quinine, which comes from the fever tree, in Kim Walker and Nataly Allasi Canales’ “Bitter Barks.” Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s essay on the Western influence on Inuit communities in northern Canada, reprinted from Granta, is one of the best individual pieces – forceful and with a unique voice, it advocates reframing the climate change debate in terms of human rights as opposed to the economy – but has nothing to do with plants specifically. There are also a couple of pieces that go strangely mystical, such as one on plant metaphors in the Kama Sutra.
  
  So, a mixed bag that jumbles science, paganism and postcolonial thought, but if you haven’t already encountered the Kimmerer and Sheldrake (or, e.g.,
  Rooted by Lyanda Lynn Haupt and
  Losing Eden by Lucy Jones) you might find this a good primer.
  
  Originally published on my blog,
  Bookish Beck.
• 
  Tim Chaplin

  The title and cover grabbed my attention. I borrowed this from my local library. A collection of essays about plants and the natural world. Most memorable bits was an essay about moss which I hadn't thought about but there are whole gardens devoted to different mosses in Japan. I hope to read more about plant life around us. I am trying to look more at the trees and plants on my urban walks and appreciate more the trees and flora in the City I live in. We have forgotten how important all of the healthy bacteria there is around us and how plants produce the oxygen we breathe in as well as help sinking carbon. Look after the plants and trees.
• 
  Philippa

  Cast aside your device and immerse yourself in the leaves of this volume of thought-provoking essays. Subtitled ‘How to grow, learn and radically engage with the natural world’, the book gathers together writings from philosophers, scientists, indigenous thinkers, climate activists and more, including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Merlin Sheldrake and Susie Orbach.
  The focus is mainly, but not only, on plants. There’s everything from plant references in the Kama Sutra, to fascinating mosses and fungi, the ability of plants to perceive, and a Quechua perspective on the tree that gives us quinine. Savour the variety and richness of the writings and black-and-white artworks – and then go out into nature, breathe it in, notice things, and be at peace.