FOPOS Book Club: Braiding Sweetgrass // 3.28.25

Join Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS) at the Mountain Lakes House for a new book club dedicated to readings about conservation, stewardship, and our relationship with nature.

Led by Diana Newby, FOPOS volunteer and faculty member in Princeton University's Writing Program, we'll spend our inaugural meeting discussing Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. A beautiful meditation on how to care for and learn from plants as our fellow living beings, Braiding Sweetgrass presents ways of thinking that are perhaps even more crucial today than when the book was published in 2013. As Kimmerer's readers, we will take up her invitation to sit with stories that can be "medicine for our broken relationship with earth." Whether this is your first time or your tenth time encountering Braiding Sweetgrass, our conversation will offer something for everyone.

We will spend our first hour discussing the book, sharing impressions, reflections, and points of connection to the mission of FOPOS as well as our personal relationships with plants. In the last half hour, we will extend the motif of "braiding sweetgrass" in a hands-on way by weaving invasive plants foraged by FOPOS volunteers.

About FOPOS: Founded in 1969, FOPOS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to acquiring open space in Princeton for preservation, protecting natural resources, maintaining accessibility to trails, and providing environmental education. As part of our mission, we work with groups in the Princeton region to support efforts to preserve and protect open space and the environment. Since our founding, we’ve helped raise over $6 million to purchase land and conservation easements in Princeton.