Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life

by Lyn Baldwin

A beautifully illustrated natural history memoir that reminds the reader that re-storying our relationship with the plants of home can be our first step in restoring the world. In a world made precarious by human mobility, all of us can learn from those who root in place. Plants surround us, yet all too often we ignore their quiet and complex lives. When a new job brings botanist and artist Lyn Baldwin back to her childhood home in southern British Columbia, she is challenged to confront both the cost of her mobility and the assumptions of her profession. If nearly three decades spent in motion gave Lyn scientific credentials and a career, it also made her a stranger to home and country. Lonely and homesick, Lyn runs outside. She doesn’t go far―rarely more than a day’s drive from Kamloops, BC―but within the pages of her field journal, the slow confluence of art and science allows Lyn to learn not just about but from the green wisdom of her neighbours. Tutored by the plants of forest and garden, wilderness and wetland, Lyn realizes that her botany never has been, and never will be, a placeless science. Instead, Drawing Botany Home gives Lyn the metaphors to reconcile the dark horror of settler/Indigenous relations and the hard edges of her own poverty, a traumatic fire, unwanted stepfathers, a hippie mother.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2023

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I was surprised to see so few reviews. I was especially surprised to see negative reviews.

Perhaps I am the ideal reader for a book like this. I am an English teacher who loves science and nature and I’ve lived near or travelled to many of the places she’s profiled throughout the book.

All my life, I’ve been itinerant; I’ve felt the pull to belong to a place, to be rooted, and so Dr. Baldwin’s words resonate deeply with me. Her writing demonstrates her ability to articulate a deep love for the natural world while still recognizing her own history and complicity in a discipline built on the imperial conquest of nature.

As someone who just moved to Kamloops, this book was a gift to read.

Thank you!

[Emma]

DNF @ Chapter 2

I'm sure this is a lovely book, the illustrations are gorgeous. But after reading Fieldwork: A Forager's Memoir by Iliana Regan, I can't bring myself to read another nature book that's more a memoir of one's messed up childhood.

[Mia Moutray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a beautiful story of place, of botany, of a life lived and still to be lived. Dr. Baldwin shares a personal journey with the reader that shows deep reflection and devotion to the natural world. I am reminded of the deep connection humans have to the environment and how we cannot continue viewing ourselves as separate (western world view). Beautifully done!

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written and illustrated botanical memoir (if that’s a genre). The author weaves in elements of her childhood and a critique of our treatment of nature in the Anthropocene. I would have loved to see even more of the author’s illustrations.

[Marmot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the mixture of art and writing in this book. The most memorable chapter for me was the one in which she describes her lichenologist friend’s garden and how it was created and tended.