Lecture, Lunch & Book Signing $45 / Books $25

Join William Bryant Logan, faculty member at The New York Botanical Garden, for a presentation of the role of woodlands in our history.

“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, that is, cut near the ground, or pollarded, that is, cut at about 6 feet tall. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was not an exploitative but a symbiotic relationship. Proper human care for the woodlands increased their diversity, promoting the density and variety of understory plants, insects, birds, mammals, invertebrates, and lichens who lived among the sprouting, growing trees. The trees themselves lived longer than uncut trees. In return, the trees gave us wood, fodder, medicines, foods, rope, clothes and ships, as well as refreshment, fresh air, and cooling shade. Whole cultures were built around such woods. This talk evokes that ancient world, not as an idyll of the past, but as a model for a future, active relationship to the trees around us. Where can we begin to work in the same way today? I will suggest that the urban forest has much in common with these ancient woods.”

William Bryant Logan is the author of "Sprout Lands", "Oak", "Air" and "Dirt", the last of which was made into an award-winning documentary. He has spent the last three decades working in trees. He is a certified arborist, and founder and president of Urban Arborists, Inc., a Brooklyn-based tree company. Logan has won numerous Quill and Trowel Awards from the Garden Writers of America, and was a contributing editor to "House Beautiful", "House and Garden", and "Garden Design" magazines, as well as a regular garden writer for the New York Times. He won a 2012 Senior Scholar Award from the New York State chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA), as well as a True Professional of Arboriculture award from the international ISA. He also won an NEH grant to translate Calderón de la Barca and has published many translations from the Spanish, including the work of García Lorca, Ramón del Valle Inclán, and Calderón.

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The Once and Future Wood by William Bryant Logan Lecture