The Living Ground of Ecuador Book Has Arrived

The book is now available on Amazon. Digital Copies are available too

After years of writing, walking the mountains and forests of Ecuador, sitting with plants, listening to local knowledge, building gardens, studying the soil microbiome, and witnessing how deeply connected human health is to the living world around us, I have finally released my newest book.

“The Living Ground of Ecuador: Wild Plants & the Medicine of the Land”

This book was born slowly through many years of living here in Ecuador. When I first arrived, I longed for a guide that connected plants not only to food and medicine, but also to ecology, culture, soil, microbes, succession, restoration, and relationship. I wanted something that spoke about plants as living participants within ecosystems rather than isolated ingredients or products.

Over time, the book became something much larger than I originally imagined because it slowly transformed into a reflection on belonging itself.

Inside these pages are hundreds of plants, trees, flowers, vines, roots, fungi, and ecological relationships woven together through personal experience, traditional use, botanical observation, soil regeneration, microbiome understanding, and the living landscapes of Ecuador.

This is not simply a plant identification book. It is a book about relationship with the living world and about remembering that plants are not separate from us. The health of the soil shapes the health of the plants, and the health of the plants shapes the health of the animals, microbes, rivers, and human beings who live among them. Everything participates together.

The deeper I explored the ecosystems of Ecuador, the more I realized that the living world itself still remembers how to heal through diversity, cooperation, reciprocity, and relationship. Forests regenerate, soil rebuilds itself through microbial life, and disturbed land slowly returns toward balance when given the proper conditions to do so. Perhaps human beings are not so different.

This thread runs quietly throughout the entire book. It was written for gardeners, herbalists, foragers, farmers, healers, microbiome explorers, plant lovers, and for anyone who feels that quiet longing to reconnect with the living systems we were once deeply woven into.

More than anything, I hope this book helps people slow down enough to see the land differently again. I hope it encourages people to notice the plants growing beside the path, to understand the language of ecosystems, and to remember that the living world is not scenery surrounding us, but a community we belong to.

Thank you to everyone who has supported Living Ground, the gardens, the writings, the workshops, the café, and the many years of work that slowly shaped this project into reality.

The book is now available on Amazon.

Leisha
Living Ground Project
Ecuador