*received for free from netgalley for honest review* pretty good with good lessons lol cute read for sure, might buy a copy for my mom

I enjoyed this book about plants and how we can learn so much about ourselves and our planet just by observing the way plants work and thrive. While this book was very much about plants and their unique qualities and care, it definitely gives examples of how we can take some lessons by observing how plants survive in less than ideal conditions or with the right about of care and love, they flourish. I came away from this book with some introspection and insight into figuring out what I need to thrive.

While listening to the book and after finishing, it took me a little bit to really put my finger on what I didn't like about it. This book toes that line between being concise and lacking substance; It's quite short.

But the thing is, this is a book about plants and gardening. If you are a gardener, nothing in this book will be new to you. And if you're not a gardener, why would you even pick up this book? I can't quite tell who the ideal audience for this is. It's rather kitschy.

And finally she makes a political statement that had nothing to do with her point that I strongly disagree with and found extremely distasteful that it was placed as it was in this book.

The audiobook narration is flat though clear. It was hard to listen to at as high of speeds as I'm used to.

Thank you Netgalley and dreamscape Media for an audiobook copy to listen to and review..

The book was a really enjoyable read. I think we all can learn so much from plants and our environment. It is a gift to have and to learn from. The perspective this book gives is affirming and I’d recommend everyone read this book. Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me access to this book. Happy to review it!

This is a great book and I would love to read it. I struggled with the audiobook version and found the narrater distracting. But I really enjoyed the content of the book and think a hardcopy would be valuable.

What a fun, informational listen. As a farm kid with a dad obsessed with botany turned house plant lover, I found the content to be so fascinating. It was a short easy listen, but certain parts I found to be a bit dry/technical. This almost felt a bit too scientific for the general public but great for plant nerds like me. Thanks for the advance reader audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

A highly informative and readable book that is scientific without becoming overly difficult. It is a good book for an entry into learning about how plants work, cooperatively and individually. The author also compares this to human systems, to ourselves, which was a fascinating way to learn the concepts.

While I listened to the audiobook, I did not have a problem with the narrator as other reviews mentioned. But I would suggest reading the print or eBook copy as well. My library bought copies of this book and there are nice line drawings with a quote between chapters.

If you want to learn more about how plants work, this would be a good book to help in that endeavor.

Mmm, not feeling this book. Previously I read "The Hidden Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben, which focuses on lesser known research of plant behavior (lesser known to the general public anyway). I thought this book would be like that. I didn't read the last paragraph of the description close enough... While the first few chapters do center on plant behavior, much of the book connects plant life to human social behavior and how we can make society better by living like plants. The audiobook narrator's voice is pleasant, but the text is very dry with few interesting nuggets sprinkled around. Not my cup of tea.

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC! All opinions are my own.

Y’all I really really really loved this book. Like really loved this book. This book is a nonfiction analysis on plants, but it isn’t a super dense scientific analysis.

As someone who has had to have so many plant classes to finish my degree, and I learned more from this book than I have in any of my classes. It was such an easy lesson and if I had the physical book I know it would also have been an easy read.

If you have always wanted to learn more about plants or just love plants in general I totally recommend this lovely audiobook and book.

Thank you @harvardpress @beronda_m and @netgalley for the Advanced Listeners Copy!!!

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I liked the idea of this book and the overall takeaway message, but I struggled with the details that were in each chapter. I found this both too general and too specific at the same time. It held too much scientific detail that I found myself bored, yet there not enough “lessons” and “takeaways” to apply. I think this book is meant for leaders in businesses and organizations, and this book would be fine to read. Again, it has good general ideas about diversification and lifting up individuals in the business, but there wasn't any practical steps, tips, application, or "how-to."

Review on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4253925259
Review on storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/d2184751-5fc8-414a-95d5-aee6191ca809

DNF 30%. I was really hoping this book was going to be similar to how to be a good creature but unfortunately it was not. The chapters are too long and for a layperson, it was too technical and sciencey. I wanted something to give me some insights on plants and also some meaningful lessons on how to be more connected and better humans. This was not that book.

As a self confessed plant geek, I loved Dr. Beronda Montgomery's debut book! Part way through this book I said to myself, this book was written by a professor. Absolutely! Dr. Montgomery is a professor at Michigan State University; one of the premier horticultural universities in the country.

Lessons from Plants was the perfect mix of detailed horticultural information, presented in a very reader friendly way (I listened to the audiobook) and related how plants exist to how humans exist and what we can learn from plants.

My favorite example was when a plant is not thriving, we try and figure out what is wrong (too much/too little sunlight, fertilizer, water, temperature) and then see what we can do to give the plant what it needs. If a person is not thriving, so we look for what is wrong and get them the help that they need? or do we provide criticism?

At the end of each chapter, Dr. Montgomery reinforced the information provided by directly tying the plant based subject matter to something that is probably going on in your life.

Such a great book! Loved it! I recommend it to anybody that likes plants as well as college students taking horticulture or agriculture.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dr. Beronda L. Montgomer the author, York Whitaker the narrator and the publisher Dreamscape Media. This review was provided in exchange for the opportunity to listen to the advance "read/listen" copy of the audiobook.

And GO GREEN! GO WHITE!

As a new, self described "plant lady," I so appreciated this book. It wasn't too dense for the average gal, and was chalk full of interesting information.

I will admit that I struggled with the reader who had a bit of a speech impediment when it came to the "ch" and "sh" sounds. Honestly, I maybe wouldn't have noticed had I not had a childhood speech issue that is still a bit triggering for me. I will likely purchase this book in a hardcover version when it comes out!

In a thoughtful balance of scientific observation, honest assessment and creative application, Beronda L. Montgomery explores how plants grow, interact and thrive in a variety of situations. Obviously written by a patient researcher and expert in the field of botany, this book includes topics including diversity, mentoring, personal growth and improvement for businesses and leaders. Interspersed with the scientific facts and patient suggestions is a palpable breathtaking wonder for the natural world and the many ways plants are much more complex and fascinating than most casual observers dream.

This book inspired me to reconsider not only how I care for my houseplants and garden but how I interact with people. It offers plenty of discussion for book clubs and even continuing education, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to colleagues and older students. The narrator, York Whitaker, has an impressively smooth voice that made this book a pleasure to listen to and made the audiobook the perfect thing to relax to at the end of the day.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this short audiobook. I'll be coming back to it whenever I need a moment of peace.

This nonfiction book explores adaptations and survival strategies of plants at both an individual and community level, then relates those concepts back to the human world. A few sections I enjoyed were the introduction when the author talked about her early experiences with plants, the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster as it relates to trees and pioneer plants, and the three sisters planting system.

I thought it was a nice touch that each chapter begins with a quote from another botanical/ecological writer like Hope Jahren or Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Fair warning, this is not botany for beginners. Beronda L. Montgomery is a college professor at Michigan State University and is also a member of the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory. The book often reads like a lecture or textbook complete with technical terms and complex concepts. I was able to pick up on most of it, but I have both educational and work experience with plants and ecology.

The narrator has a speech impediment. It makes some words difficult to understand. I didn't finish listening to the book and won't post a review online.

Pros: During the pandemic I’ve been looking for new hobbies and interests. During quarantine, one of my favorite activities was taking a home gardening course through the state ag center. I was interested in reading this book as an extension of what I learned in the gardening course. This book was more scientific than I expected based on the cover of the book—I assumed it was going to be a bit self-help-y. I was pleasantly surprised at the academic nature of the book and how it compares plant behavior to human behavior—specifically how both groups adapt, survive, and thrive in their environments. I appreciate that although the book is technical and scientific, it is accessible and approachable to all readers. I’m also interested in the other books this book references, including Lab Girl and Braiding Sweetgrass.

Cons: I listened to this book, which was fine, but I think this book would be more helpful in print as a reference book. I’m also curious what annotations, diagrams, etc I might have missed by listening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to listen to this book.

I’ve shared this review on Goodreads and StoryGraph.

3.5 stars

As a Biology Professor, I really appreciate the approach of this book. It was approachable and applicable but also full of complex scientific topics and details. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to a student who was interested in learning more about plants and how they fit into our society/what we could learn from them.

Beronda Montgomery is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University. She is a plant biologist whose research focuses on how photosynthetic organisms adapt to changes in light. Lessons from Plants is her first book.

It has been more than 20 years since I've taken a plant biology course. I enjoy plants and I thought plant knowledge would be useful in what I hoped to make a career of - designing animal habitats and enrichment opportunities for captive wildlife. But really I took the extra classes (only 1 was required) to keep from having to take microbiology or histology. In truth, I struggle to keep a plant alive.

As I like learning about all sorts of science, I thought this would be an interesting book as it proposed to relate the biology of plants to human societal issues.

I listened to the audiobook read by York Whitaker. It is a short audiobook - it's just over 4 hours and I was able to finish it in a day while doing household chores.

My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Saurday, September 11 - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2021/09/lessons-from-plants-by-beronda-l.html

At first, it felt like a textbook was being read to me, though the level of biological information is similar to what you would encounter in a high school biology class. The first few "lessons" we could learn from plants didn't really into the application. It was more like plants have to balance limited resources, we have to do learn to balance resources too. But some of the later lessons went a bit more in-depth on how to apply it to our own circumstances.

I particularly liked the chapter about when plants don't thrive. As I mentioned earlier, plants don't usually thrive under my care. When a plant is struggling as the caretaker I usually try to figure out is it getting too much or too little water, does it need more or less sunlight, does it need to be fertilized. And when the plant eventually dies - I confirm that I don't have a green thumb. As Montgomery points out we rarely blame the plant for not thriving. Sure there could be a genetic mutation or something "wrong" with the plant, but that is definitely not our first consideration. However, with people, it is our first reaction to blame the person for failing to thrive instead of considering aspects of their environment or the skills of the "caretakers".

I think this book would be really useful if you were preparing a presentation and were looking to nature for examples of solutions to human societal issues. It is definitely one of the more unique approaches I've read about looking to nature to understand and inform our own choices in the environment.

"Researchers have made the remarkable finding that some plants may adjust their competitive or collaborative behavior depending on whether their neighbors are close kin or not.” - From Lessons From Plants

2.5 stars

A short surface level examination of six attributes about plants and how it may relate to humans. Each premise was interesting, but the text is very repetitive, explaining the characteristic multiple times until the reader becomes bored. Each premise wasn’t actually dived into with many details or cited examples. All of this info also has been circulated in other popular plant nonfiction, many of which are more successful in creating captivating prose to go along with the subject.

I received a copy in exchange for an honest review.