Meet Paul Wood. A London tree celebrity, researching and mapping urban trees in the UK, and the author of several books on Urban Street Trees.

In this episode of Nature Connections, Paul shares with us his personal journey from corporate tech jobs to tree authorship, the different interactive initiatives he has launched to increase awareness of urban trees, as well as some of the incredible benefits for us of trees in urban environments.

Here is more about Paul:

Paul lives in London, he spent many years working in the technology industry and was a trustee of London Wildlife Trust until 2017. He is the co-founder of the Urban Tree Festival and TreeTalk, and the patron of Street Trees for Living. Paul has been interested in plants since he was 13 when a Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) appeared in their back garden. Everywhere he goes he finds himself making mental notes about what’s growing and what might be growing, and he writes a blog "The Street Tree" about his musings on nature, plants, landscapes and the environment.

If you live in the UK (especially in the North) or Ireland and would like to share a noteworthy tree in an urban area for Paul's research, you can notify him here: https://thestreettree.com/remarkable-british-and-irish-urban-trees/ . You can also find Paul on instagram: @thestreettree

Discover the recordings of the 2021 and 2020 Urban Tree Festivals events: https://urbantreefestival.org/

Shop tree books by Paul Wood

“Who would have thought there were over 400 different types of tree on London’s streets?

When the first edition of this wonderful guidebook came out in 2017, most people thought a street tree meant a London Plane. In fact, as it revealed, the capital’s magnificently green streets were home to everything from Giant Redwoods to Persian Silk Trees – an urban arboretum as vibrantly multicultural as this great world city itself.

But the planting hasn’t stopped, so now this new, expanded, completely revised edition contains even more trees and tree walks. It tells you where to find, amazingly, Persimmons and Peanut Butter Trees, Weeping Willowsand Wedding Cake Trees, and how local communities are themselves now transforming their own London streets with trees.”

I’ve added a little card- a limited edition printed card of a Ginkgo leaf design (A6 format, on recycled paper), so why not mark the page of the next tree you’ll hunt for? Or perhaps it will inspire you to gather fallen leaves for each of the trees you discover and leave them to dry flat inside your book.

Only 10 available !

To get your copy or send it as a gift, click purchase on the left. Dispatched next day/ UK shipping 3-5 working days.