The Company of Trees: A Year in a Lifetime's Quest

by Thomas Pakenham

Overview

'The master. Puts all other modern tree-writers in the shade' John Lewis-Stempel, author of Meadowland

Thomas Pakenham is an indefatigable champion of trees. In The Company of Trees he recounts his personal quest to establish a large arboretum on the family estate, Tullynally in Ireland; his forays to other tree-filled parks and plantations; his often hazardous seed-hunting expeditions; and his efforts to preserve magnificent old trees and historic woodlands.

Whether writing about the terrible storms breaking the backs of hundred-year-old trees or a fire in the peat bog on Tullynally which threatens to spread to the main commercial spruce-woods, his fear of climate change and disease, or the sturdy young saplings giving him hope for the future, his book is never less than enthralling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780297866251
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	09/10/2015
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Thomas Pakenham is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Year of Liberty, The Boer War and The Scramble for Africa. He is also the author and photographer of the bestselling Meetings with Remarkable Trees, Remarkable Trees of the World and In Search of Remarkable Trees: On Safari in Southern Africa. He lives in Ireland and is chairman of the Irish Tree Society.
Thomas Pakenham is the author of the critically acclaimed The Scramble for Africa, which won the W. H. Smith Award and the Alan Paton Award. He is also the author of The Boer War, The Mountains of Rasselas, and The Company of Trees, among many other books. He lives in Ireland.

Table of Contents

Map x

Introduction 1

1 Two White Goddesses (15 December 2012-1 January 2013) 9

2 A Tour of the Demesne (2 January) 19

3 Murdering Your Friends (4 January) 26

4 Monkeys' Despair (8 January-1 February) 36

5 Plagues from the East (6-27 February) 47

6 Knicker-Pink (18 March-15 April) 55

7 Sharawadgi (30 April) 70

8 To the Rescue (1 May) 82

9 Pity the Poor Sycamore (10 May) 97

10 Lost Horizon (20 June) 107

11 How Old Is an Old Yew? (1-16 July) 121

12 Flames at My Heels (21 July-14 August) 136

13 Lake of the Oaks (10 September) 147

14 Dancing at Knockeyon (11 September) 157

15 On the Track of the Green Man (12 September-10 October) 167

16 'But Where Is His Lordship?' (10 October) 177

17 Coolattin: the Forlorn Hope (15 October) 187

18 Fireworks (31 October-5 November) 197

19 The Trees That Lost Their Heads (8 November) 205

20 Hunting for Dr Falconer's Rhodo (25 November-25 December) 214

21 Epilogue (15 February 2014) 222

List of chapter illustrations 226

Bibliography 227

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

The more you read of the various Earls' attempts to create beautiful views across their parkland, the more you realise they struggle with the same problems the rest of us face when designing our own little gardens. The only difference is that they're working on a massive scale, and thinking in centuries instead of years ... Raising all his own saplings from seed, he comes across like a real-life version of P. G. Wodehouse's amiable (if unworldly) Lord Emsworth, pottering about with his seed trays and compost in his ancestral kitchen. But he engages fully with the 21st-century threat of global warming, as well as the four new diseases threatening our trees: acute oak decline, sudden oak death, ash dieback and pseudomonas syringae - a lethal canker of horse chestnuts that has infected 49 per cent of the tree species in England, according to a recent survey

—Helen Brown, DAILY MAIL

The Company of Trees: A Year in a Lifetime's Quest, brings readers along a journey from the 1,500 acres of farm and parkland of the family estate at Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath, to planthunting expeditions in Asia and South America, and more ... told in monthly chapters that will charm a readership beyond those who don't need to Google 'arboretum' for a definition. There is a sense of adventure in travel diary revelations where the energetic Eighth Lord Longford (though he doesn't use that inherited title) tells of shinning up rocky banks near the foothills of the Himalayas and nearly breaking an ankle in the quest for seeds. He being in his 80th year, mind ... Good-humoured revelations of triumphs that sometimes end in failure contribute to an engaging openness—Valerie Shanley, IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY

At Tullynally, his estate in Ireland. Thomas Pakenham is growing his own woodland. In this lively diary of his travels to the Himalayas and Patagonia in search of seeds, and his tours of the thriving plantations where he plants and preserves trees, he gives seasoned advice on garden design and landscaping, and worries about the diseases that have devastated ashes, elms, oaks and chestnuts—SAGA magazine

Historians make very good tree people because they respect both the past, with its particular and changing atmospheres, as well as posterity. After all, most trees span more than one human lifetime, and the story of trees has been part of the story of the land and even the people. And historians can salt the worthy fare of plant descriptions with tales of plant hunters and gardeners from the past. Pakenham's writing is brisk, clearly personal and pleasantly epigrammatic ... Readers should finish this book with a lively sense of the importance and allure of trees, even if they have never so much as planted an acorn—Ursula Buchan, THE SPECTATOR

Few have ever indulged their inclinations on a grander scale than Thomas Pakenham, whose passion is for trees. This is an exuberant tale of greed and gratified desire by a romantic who, for 50 years and more, has been planting trees by the thousand on his family estate at Tullynally in Westmeath. Pakenham is currently in his 82nd year, and buying magnolias like a madman "in what the Germans call Torschlusspanik" (last-minute or door-closing panic) ... Trees are, as this book points out, "the biggest living things in these islands, taller than most buildings, older than many ancient monuments", and, like the Williamses at Caerhays and the Holfords of Westonbirt, the planting Pakenhams have done them proud in person and in print—Hilary Spurling, THE GUARDIAN

Botanical history and travel are two of the underlying elements of this absorbing year in the life of tree-loving Thomas Pakenham. Eloquently written as a diary and illustrated with an array of colour photographs, this informative and entertaining read describes the arboretum and garden areas he is creating on the family estate in Ireland. The book reveals his observations, experiences and lessons learned—COUNTRYSIDE

Thomas Pakenham could convert a property developer into a tree-hugger ... If The Company of Trees is a diary, it is also a journey - into the author's life and Tullynally's past. The book's photographs are as beautiful and glossy as conkers; anecdote and information fall like autumn mast ... I closed the book and went to look at my own trees. Thanks to the joyful hours spent in its author's company, I saw them anew. His book is a plum among autumn's publishing fruits—John Lewis-Stempel, COUNTRY LIFE

Gardeners who love beauty, not arboreal ethnicity, now have an eloquent ally ... The Company of Trees is beautifully illustrated with his own excellent colour photos... it tells a story which has touching continuity across generations—Robin Lane-Fox, FINANCIAL TIMES

The book is written as a journal in a tone so natural you feel as if you're in his study at Tullynally as the wind soughs through the woods. His hard-won knowledge garnered over a lifetime of seed-collecting, planting and observation is displayed lightly so you absorb masses of information without ever feeling like you're at a dendrology conference. It's impossible not to feel affection for a man nearing 80 who not only plants a copse of rare Magnolia campellii Alba Group from seed, but collects that seed himself from a mountainside in Sikkim, India ... Pakenham's optimism and concern for future generations, both trees and people, is infectious. The world's trees could not have a more compelling advocate—Caroline Beck, GARDENS ILLUSTRATED

The Company of Trees: A Lifetime's Quest is by one of the world's most famous tree huggers, octogenarian Thomas Pakenham of Tullynally Castle. It tells the story of his collection of remarkable trees in Co. Westmeath, and also shares gems such as discovering a rare blue poppy in Tibet by sitting on it, and getting lost at nightfall in his own woods only to be saved by a search party hours later—THE SUNDAY TIMES IRELAND

Thomas Pakenham, the champion of trees, narrates a story of exploration and discovery, of life-cycles longer than our own in this lavishly illustrated book ... An enthralling book by a passionate writer, educator and entertainer—WELSH BORDER LIFE

Thomas Pakenham's endlessly fascinating life and garden is the subject of The Company of Trees in which he continues the story of one man's love for all things arboreal begun in his 2002 bestseller, Meetings with Remarkable Trees. In this latest work we find him at home in Tullynally, where he has established an important arboretum, recalling his diverse personal quests for plants and seeds found on his far-flung travels ... and as all journeys begin with one small step, so do many plants grow from one small seed. Their stories follow fast and furious—David Wheeler, HORTUS

From the Publisher