num_pages: 384
description: Winner of the 2021 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History WritingThis deeply nourishing book invites us to reclaim reciprocity with the living world. ?Robin Wall Kimmerer author of Braiding Sweetgrass Once farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts and of straight strong flexible rods for bridges walls and baskets. Townspeople cut their beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. Pruning the trees didnt destroy them. Rather it created the healthiest most sustainable and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known. In this journey from the English fens to Spain Japan and California William Bryant Logan rediscovers what was once an everyday ecology. He offers us both practical knowledge about how to live with trees to mutual benefit and hope that humans may again learn what the persistence and generosity of trees can teach. 15 black and white illustrations
language: English
title: Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company