Dr Gabriel Hemery (born 13 December 1968) is an English forest scientist (silvologist) and author. He co-founded the Sylva Foundation with Sir Martin Wood, a tree and forestry charity established in 2009.

Career

He began his career at the Northmoor Trust, now 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.

He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.[better source needed]

In 2011, he co-founded the ginger group Our Forests with other 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.

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

With Sarah Simblet he wrote a contemporary version of John Evelyn's Sylva – The New Sylva – published by Bloomsbury in April 2014.[better source needed]

He has written several fiction works including with Unbound Publishing (. Unbound Publishing. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78965-023-5. ) 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 published two short story collections and a poetry anthology.

He completed work on a series of three guidebooks to British forests published by Bloomsbury Wildlife, the first of which was "The Forest Guide: Scotland" published April 2023., with the Wales guide published in 2025 and the England guide coming 2026.

Forestry research

He designed and established a new woodland and centre for hardwood forestry research; Paradise Wood. 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.). He gained a DPhil degree at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford on the genetic improvement of walnut. 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. He then researched and published numerous articles pertaining to the silviculture (e.g.) and genetic improvement of walnut. He initiated an agroforestry research project in the mid-1990s, combining free-range broiler chicken with newly established woodland.

Books

Non-Fiction

Fiction

  • 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.

External links