“The prairie thrummed with energy, thick with humming bees and trilling birds. The growing season had reached a crescendo, each plant and creature playing at full volume in the summer symphony.”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher! This is a non-fiction book about how to identify flowers in the wild, written by a Master Naturalist. It had lots of great information, and as someone who collects books about gardening, flora identification, and field guides, I can say this book genuinely had lots of information that I did not already know and found really interesting.

A room for improvement would be the illustrations. Using color block style illustrations, rather than photographs or even a more detailed illustration in keeping with the book cover, isn’t very helpful in a book about memorizing plant identification. It makes it more of a cute gift book, rather than an actual pocket field guide.

Overall, it would be a cute book on a bookshelf for someone who loves collecting books about nature.

I received this DRC from NetGalley.

3.5 stars. There was some good general info about flowers/plants and words that you could use to describe them. Info about which ones are edible is included. Different regions of the US get their own page with a few specific flowers and places to see them. I think where it falls a bit short is in listing the specific flowers. The art is cute, but when you're talking about identification, there should be more accurate depictions for comparison- or at least something to make the size of the plants clear. I just think if you're taking a pocket guide with you to help identify flowers, it would be more helpful to have one that focuses on listing more flowers and their specifics. The other stuff, you should just read beforehand.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this book in exchange for my review! All opinions are my own.

If you enjoy flowers and nature, you will enjoy this book. Even if you are new to learning about flowers and want to educate self more, this is also a good book. I really enjoyed looking at the pretty flowers and learning about flowers I didn't know much about previously.

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This is the first year I am attempting a cut flower garden with wildflowers and I already know this is going to be a fabulous resource!

This is a beautifully written, informational and whimsical guide to flower finding that any aspiring gardener or well versed gardener would love to have in their collection.

I really loved the illustrations in the pocket guide and how each flower had the name, appearance, location, habitat and blooming season. As someone who is truly trying to just start and locate wildflowers, this is a true gem.

“I must have flowers, always, and always.” - Claude Monet

As someone who wants to learn more about the flower species around me and understand the best approach to growing my own cut flowers, this Pocket Nature was the perfect guide to help me with tips and tricks to appropriately identify flowers.

The guide was incredibly artful , intentional and I loved the light, anecdotal approach that helped apply real life identifiers to scientific information.

I also learned a TON of new wildflower species (the whimsical names were my favorite — sneezeweed and fairy hat?!) and I really enjoyed the illustrations.

This guide encompassed everything that I would want in an educational and informative book. The mindfulness practices were thoughtful, identifying specific destinations encouraged me to research them for potential trips, “what flowers can teach us” gave me a lot of pause for inspiration, and I now know what to look for this blooming season in the Northeast that I might not have been able to identify before.

PS: I would hang these illustrations on my wall, especially the one on the last page 😍

I loved the concept of this book, and the writing did not disappoint. Inspirational ideas, mindfulness suggestions, fun details included, all you could want in a pocket guide. Except actual photos to identify wildflowers.

I will not be using sketches to identify wildflowers, although they were beautiful and nicely drawn.