Mary Porter Kerns is an author, amateur naturalist, gardener, artist, weaver and a voice for the flowers. Her book, The Flowers Are Speaking: Listening to Nature’s Ancient Wisdom, will be published March 16th, 2027 by Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Weaving together science, history, and earth-based mysticism, The Flowers Are Speaking explores the ancient relationship between humans and flowers—and what the intelligence of the living world might teach us about how to live now.
Mary has spent a lifetime seeking out the guidance of flowers in her beloved Appalachian Mountains. Her work explores the astonishing science of plant intelligence and sentience alongside the more mysterious ways we experience and relate to the natural world.
In 2022, she self-published the first edition of her oracle deck, also called The Flowers Are Speaking, which sold out in three months. She also leads experiential workshops that help participants deepen their own relationships with flowers through observation, the senses, imagination, and intuition.
Before devoting herself to this work, Mary spent more than thirty years as a partner in her family’s insurance business. The business world taught her many things, but perhaps most of all, how desperately she loves the natural world.
Mary lives in Charleston, West Virginia, surrounded by the mountains, rivers, forests, and wildflowers of Appalachia—a landscape that makes her heart sing and dance, as well as weep for all it has endured.
Her heart’s desire is to continue experiencing the wild aliveness and deep sentience of flowers, to share what she discovers, and to help others make their own connections with the living world.