Environment

Arboretum America by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest

Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Rights: World
For more info, contact Mary Bisbee-Beek at bisbeeb@umich.edu

Arboretum America is, at the very least, the Bible of Trees. But its ambitions are grander than that.

Author Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a self-described "renegade scientist," aims for no less than the salvation of the planet—through the miracle of trees.

There are many books on both subjects. Some warm, some inform, while others meditate on the disappearance of the forests or the meaning of trees. Few books, though, touch on all of these subjects as Arboretum America does.

Beresford's remedy, what she calls the Bioplan, commences with a simple directive: know thy trees. Most important, this revolution must start, not with governments and sweeping legislation, but with "ordinary people with an acorn and a shovel."

As E.O. Wilson writes in his foreword to Arboretum America, Beresford-Kroeger is a poet and naturalist by calling, "both druidical and scientific in literary expression." So, too, is her Bioplan, which in spirit and letter covers all aspects of trees, from their history and use by Native Americans, to their organic care, their medicinal and therapeutic properties, design and horticultural considerations, and the magic spell they cast over us. Arboretum America is, essentially, a holistic approach to trees, and it suggests that trees, if properly understood and planted, will someday restore the forest primeval.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist, medical and agricultural researcher, lecturer, and self-defined "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

October 2003
214 pages