In search of remarkable trees in the company of a remarkable man - and a bestselling 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.
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
*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
*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
*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
*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
*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
*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
*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
*HORTUS*
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