Gabriel Hemery

He began his career at the Northmoor Trust,[1] now named the Earth Trust, in Oxfordshire. He later became Director of Development for the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, returning to forestry to establish the Forestry Horizons think-tank in 2006. He is currently Chief Executive of Sylva Foundation, which he co-founded with Sir Martin Wood in 2009.[2]

He has played an active role in the Institute of Chartered Foresters where he is a Fellow.[3]

During 2011, he co-founded the ginger group Our Forests with other prominent environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and Tony Juniper, to provide a voice for the people of England in the future of the country's public forests.[4]

In 2022, he was elected Chair of the Forestry and Climate Change Partnership [5] which exists to help Britain's trees, woods, and forests to be resilient and adapt to a changing climate.

With co-author Sarah Simblet he wrote a contemporary version of John Evelyn's Sylva - The New Sylva - published by Bloomsbury in April 2014.[6]

He has written several fiction works including with Unbound Publishing ("author page". Unbound Publishing. Retrieved 7 January 2019. ) Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey; a biographical novel describing the true story of an expedition to North America by Victorian botanist John Jeffrey between 1850 and 1854. He has also written two short story collections and a poetry anthology.[7]

He is currently working on a series of guidebooks to British forests published by Bloomsbury, the first of which was "The Forest Guide: Scotland" published April 2023.[8]

In late 2023, his latest book "The Tree Almanac 2024" will be published by (Robinson Books, part of Little,_Brown_Book_Group, with the Foreword written by Tracy_Chevalier.[9]

He designed and established a new woodland and centre for hardwood forestry research; Paradise Wood.[10] He was a founding member of the British and Irish Hardwoods Improvement Programme establishing a number of forestry field trials across the UK and Ireland (e.g.[11]). He gained a DPhil degree at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford on the genetic improvement of walnut.[12] His research took him to the walnut fruit forests of Kyrgyzstan where he collected thousands of Juglans regia seeds for field trials back in the UK.[13] He then researched and published numerous articles pertaining to the silviculture (e.g.[14][15]) and genetic[16] improvement of walnut. He initiated an agroforestry research project in the mid-1990s, combining free-range broiler chicken with newly established woodland.[17][18]

• Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet — The New Sylva: a discourse of forest and orchard trees for the twenty-first century. 400pp. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). ISBN 978-1408835449.
• Gabriel Hemery — Don't Look Back. in Adrian Cooper (ed) — Arboreal: a collection of new woodland writing. (Little Toller Books, 2016). ISBN 978-1908213419.
• Gabriel Hemery — Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey. (Unbound Publishing, 2019). ISBN 978-1789650235.
• Gabriel Hemery — Tall Trees Short Stories: Vol.20. (Wood Wide Works, 2020). ISBN 978-1916336216.
• Gabriel Hemery — The Man Who Harvested Trees (and Gifted Life). in Fiona Stafford (ed) — Stories of Trees, Woods and the Forest. (Everyman's Library, 2021). ISBN 978-1841596310.
• Gabriel Hemery — Tall Trees Short Stories: Vol.21. (Wood Wide Works, 2021). ISBN 978-1916336230.
• Gabriel Hemery — The Wolf, The Walnut and the Woodsman. (Wood Wide Works, 2022). ISBN 978-1916336254.
• Gabriel Hemery — Blough: an Anthology of Tree and Nature Poems. (Wood Wide Works, 2022). ISBN 978-1916336278.
• Gabriel Hemery — The Forest Guide: Scotland. 320pp. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023). ISBN 978-1472994622.
• Gabriel Hemery — The Tree Almanac 2024. 336pp. (Robinson Books, Little,_Brown_Book_Group, 2023). ISBN 978-1472148490. Foreword by Tracy_Chevalier.

• Official website of Gabriel Hemery
• Gabriel Hemery's profile on GoodReads
• Walnut Thesis
• Sylva Foundation
• myForest Project