Ben Goulet-Scott, a leader in the Education Team at Harvard Forest, has co-authored a new book, Let’s Botanize, and it recently received a glowing review in The New York Times.
Ben and his co-author, Jacob Suissa, met in 2017 as doctoral students in Harvard’s Dept. of Organizational and Evolutionary Biology. They launched Let’s Botanize on Instagram in 2021, and its popularity spurred them to create the Let’s Botanize educational nonprofit.
The book and the non-profit pose botanizing as an active past-time, harkening back to earlier centuries, but serving the present, looking to “combat the climate and biodiversity crises by spreading curiosity, knowledge and appreciation of plants.”
Goulet-Scott explains, “As graduate students, Jacob and I really enjoyed the hobby of botanizing, but we felt there weren’t many resources explaining or promoting the hobby to a wide audience. As our Let’s Botanize platform grew, we started dreaming about writing a book that would introduce people to the hobby. When we finally got the chance to write a book, Jacob’s experience as a botany professor and my experience as an educator at Harvard Forest were instrumental in shaping how we present plant biology as both scientifically rigorous and accessible to all.”
We are planning a series of events about the book at Harvard Forest in spring and summer 2027.
Follow the project on Instagram and TikTok.
