Once, people around the globe did not simply live beside or under trees. We lived with them, taking from them and giving to them. We cut them back, and they sprouted again. Whole woodlands were coppiced, or pollarded. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was not an exploitative but a symbiotic relationship. Proper human care for the woodlands increased their diversity and promoted the numbers and kinds of insects, birds, and other creatures that lived among the trees and the open understory vegetation. The trees themselves lived longer and, in return, gave us wood, fodder, medicines, foods, rope, clothes, and ships, as well as beauty, fresh air, and cooling shade. Whole cultures were built around such woods. This lecture evokes that ancient world, not as an idyll of the past, but as a model for a future active relationship to our trees.
William Bryant Logan is the author of Oak, Air, and Dirt, the last of which was made into an award-winning documentary, and he has won numerous Quill and Trowel Awards from the Garden Writers of America. On the faculty of the New York Botanical Garden, Logan is also a certified arborist and the founder and president of Urban Arborists, Inc. Logan received the 2012 Senior Scholar Award from the New York State chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) and a True Professional of Arboriculture award from the international ISA.