300 page Hardcover featuring 300 colour photographs.
The 15 chapters focus on different species that Rowan grows on his Bambra Agroforestry Farm. These include the local Australian Blackwood and Mountain Ash, low rainfall native timber species like Red Ironbark and Spotted Gum, sub-tropical natives such as Sydney Blue Gum, Silky Oak, River Sheoak and Australian Red Cedar, and exotics including Coast Redwood, Black Walnut, English Oak and Poplar. Rowan uses these species to explore the fundamentals of tree growing and timber production making the book relevant to farmers, foresters and conservationists around the world. Examples from Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Europe, North America and SE Asia demonstrate how growing and cutting a tree for timber can be an act of conservation. Naturally, the book covers the technical aspects of tree planting, pruning and thinning, harvesting and timber processing and the science behind tree growth and wood quality. But, Rowan also reflects on the what it means to be a tree grower and how governments, industry and farmer groups can encourage landholders to plant and manage trees for conservation and profit.
Heartwood challenges the entrenched view that when it comes to forests, one is either a conservationist or a profiteer. Forest scientist Rowan Reid draws on over twenty years of experience and study to offer a third way: where growing trees for profit can have a positive environmental impact. He challenges the ideological poles that dominate the debate and offers a scientific view on how anyone with the necessary land and time can grow their own trees and profit from them while improving the soil, water and ecosystem. Rowan also shares the personal story and family history that lead him to his revolutionary new approach. He shares his passion for native trees and provides the practical information that readers will need to understand and grow trees of their own.
180 x 225mm
