It was probably the first musical composition not intended for human ears. Just three years after Secret Life of Plants was published, the ‘Plant Music’ genre kicked off with Mort Garson’s psychedelic synth album, Mother Earth’s Plantasia. But for many composers, the idea made a lot of sense. It’s an unsettling thought, that your Monstera might be, you know, listening. But the basic premise caught people’s imagination. The science was downright sketchy, and the authors also chucked in a lot of stuff about “a supernatural world of cosmic beings” (hey, it was the ‘70s). They also respond to music played at certain frequencies and volumes, and in fact grow better when exposed to particular sounds. They can feel happy, or depressed, or scared – just like us. Bird and Tompkins argued that plants are sentient creatures. The book’s basis argument is that plants, for lack of a better word, like music. Secret Life of Plants became an international bestseller and spawned an entirely new genre. It all goes back to 1973 and a very strange book called The Secret Life of Plants, written by author Christopher Bird and ex-military spy Peter Tompkins. If you’ve just dumped another shriveled Ficus in the wheelie bin, and you’re starting to feel like some sort of botanical assisted dying clinic, there is one radical fix you p robably haven’t tried.
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