Earlier today, I announced that my new book, Tree Hunting, will be published by Particular Books in May this year. It celebrates 1,000 great British and Irish trees, providing a description and location details of each, it includes gorgeous maps, loads of my own photos and it features sixteen ‘Tree Cities’, each with 20 or more trees to discover.
Ever since I started working on the book, many people have asked how I selected the 1,000 trees it features. I have tried to shed some light here.
Firstly, the subtitle of the book, ‘1,000 Trees to Find in Britain and Ireland’s Towns and Cities’ narrows it down a little. Essentially, I was seeking out urban trees – those that most people know and live with. There are some trees which grow on roadsides or on the very edge of town, and there are some trees that can be found in specialist collections like Kew Gardens or the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin.
All the trees are accessible by foot and are, with very few exceptions, free to visit. Some, like Cherry Cinnamon, a hybrid strawberry tree in Cambridge, grows in a private garden, but it is so visible it can be regarded as a landmark, only one you can’t get close enough to actually feel its intriguing bark.
Beyond their location, I have selected them using a range of criteria: does it have an interesting story to tell? Does it offer a new perspective on the place where it grows? Is it a rare species? Is it a particularly old, large, strange-looking, lovely or well-positioned tree? Has it been previously recorded, and have other people noticed it?
In answering these questions, I have brought together a motley crew: ancient and modern trees; relics of previous landscapes; stalwarts of Georgian squares, Victorian cemeteries and Edwardian parks; trees on postwar estates and university campuses; and twenty-first-century trees planted to revitalise our city streets.
There are trees that survived the Blitz like Poor Susan’s Plane close to St Paul’s in London, or the Bluecoat Plane in Liverpool; trees serving as monuments to historic events that shaped whole countries, such as the Hezlett Chestnut near Coleraine; and trees that have become memorials to significant individuals, like the Turing Ash in Manchester, or the Moseley Bog Oak in Birmingham. Through trees like these, we have a living link to the past; with them, we can trace our shared history. Others might simply be astonishing for their sheer physical presence, their incredible age, captivating beauty or great rarity.
I hope this gives you an insight into the trees that feature in the pages of Tree Hunting. To give you even more of a taste, I will be posting a tree a day until publication on my Instagram (like the New Cross Gate Giant Redwood below), and you can find accounts of many great trees on my Substack.
Finally, if you would like to read more about Tree Hunting and you would like to pre-order your copy (it will be published on 15th May 2025), visit the publisher’s website.
One reply on “Tree Hunting – How I Chose the Trees”
Looks fantastic, loving the cover.