The Tree Collectors

Tales of Arboreal Obsession

By: Amy Stewart

Length: 8 hrs

Publisher's summary

Fifty vignettes of remarkable people whose lives have been transformed by their obsessive passion for trees—from Amy Stewart, the New York Times bestselling author of The Drunken Botanist.

The Japanese practice of forest bathing, shinrin-yoku, changes the levels of stress and pleasure hormones in the body, decreasing cortisol and increasing serotonin. And if being around one tree feels good, imagine how a hundred trees would feel. In her first botanical nonfiction in more than a decade, Amy Stewart brings us captivating stories of people who spend their lives collecting trees and asks them: what drives one to collect something as enormous, majestic, and deeply-rooted as a tree?

In her gentle, intimate, slyly humorous way, Stewart brings fifty of these people to life, organizing their stories into categories. There are the community builders—like Shyam Sunder Paliwal who, after the death of his daughter, began a movement in his Rajasthan village to plant 111 trees whenever a girl was born—who do the remarkable work of knitting people together under an arboreal canopy. There are seekers who have taken their passion for trees around the world, or even into space. There are visionaries—the former poet laureate, W.S. Merwin, who planted a tree a day for over three decades, until he had turned a barren estate into a palm sanctuary. And there are healers—like Joe Hamilton, who plants trees on land passed down to him by his formerly enslaved great-grandfather—who have found a way to heal their own lives, the lives of others, or even wounds of the past, by planting trees.

Vivid watercolor portraits of these extraordinary people populate this lively compendium along with with sidetrips to investigate more about trees, including: famous tree collections, necessary terms, and even "tips for unauthorized forestry." This book will be a gift for the hundreds of thousands of listeners who have come to Amy's previous nature books and a delightful, informative, and often poignant treat for a whole new audience.

©2024 Amy Stewart (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“I love everything Amy Stewart has ever created, but this book is my favorite yet. I’m giving this book to everyone I know. Because it, like its subject, is a gift.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The City of Girls and The Signature of All Things

“Like the brushstrokes in the fine paintings alongside them, Stewart’s vignettes add up to something more: a powerful portrait of the human passion for plants and a paean to what the plants give back.”—Thor Hanson, author of The Triumph of Seeds

“Literary pointillism . . . a warm and brilliant mural of life that tells a larger story about humanity: our desires, our losses, our salvation, and our place on a beautiful living planet during a time of immense challenges.”—Greg King, author of The Ghost Forest