Sprout Lands
Tending the Endless Gift of Trees
12 June 2020
Description
Arborist William Bryant Logan recovers the lost tradition that sustained human life and culture for ten millennia.
Farmers once knew how to make a living fence 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 beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. In order tp prosper communities cut their trees so they would sprout again. Pruning the trees didn’t destroy them. Rather, it created healthy, sustainable and diverse woodlands. From these woods came the poetic landscapes of Shakespeare’s England and of ancient Japan. The trees lived longer.
William Bryant Logan travels from the English fens to Spain, California and Japan to rediscover and celebrate what was once a common and practical ecology—finding hope that humans may again learn what the persistence and generosity of trees can teach.
Reviews
"William Bryant Logan’s vision of a world in which humans and trees work together to mutual benefit—a world that has existed in the past and can exist again in the future—is cause for deep joy, for celebration and hope." — Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees
"... this vividly insightful exploration of tree regeneration." — Nature
Awards
Winner — John Burroughs Medal, 2021
Also By: William Bryant Logan 
Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth
E Book, 2014
"A gleeful, poetic book…Like the best natural histories, Dirt is a kind of prayer." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Air: The Restless Shaper of the World
Paperback, 2013
In a sublime exploration of the most unpredictable element of the earth, William Bryant Logan opens our eyes to the astonishing physics, chemistry, biology, history, art, and even music of the air....
Air: The Restless Shaper of the World
E Book, 2012
In a sublime exploration of the most unpredictable element of the earth, William Bryant Logan opens our eyes to the astonishing physics, chemistry, biology, history, art, and even music of the air....
Oak: The Frame of Civilization
E Book, 2011
"A dazzling book, full of knowledge and rare wisdom, too" —Thomas Pakenham, author of Remarkable Trees of the World
Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth
Paperback, 2007
"A gleeful, poetic book…Like the best natural histories, Dirt is a kind of prayer." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
