About Gabriel Hemery

Dr Gabriel Hemery is a forest scientist, author, and photographer whose life's work is centred on trees and forests. As a silvologist and chartered forester, he has spent his career studying and caring for woodlands. As a writer he has produced several works of fiction and non-fiction exploring that same world. His tree photography has appeared in books and international advertising campaigns. In 2009, Gabriel co-founded Sylva Foundation, a charity working to nurture a wood culture across Britain.

Gabriel's first and award-winning book, The New Sylva, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014, celebrating and updating John Evelyn's 1664 Sylva. He has completed The Forest Guide series, three guidebooks featuring more than 1,000 of Britain's most interesting, beautiful and valuable forests, published with Bloomsbury Wildlife. He has written two editions of The Tree Almanac with Robinson Books. Gabriel has written several fiction titles, including two novels, two short story collections, and a poetry anthology.

Gabriel is a semi-professional photographer of trees and forests. All the photographs in The Forest Guide series are his, taken during extensive fieldwork across Britain. His images have been shortlisted for awards, and featured in magazines, books, merchandise, and international advertising campaigns. He has curated exhibitions at a number of UK venues, including Art in Action, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Gabriel is a silvologist (forest scientist). Gabriel has authored more than 100 technical articles, cited in 1,800 articles by other scientists. He has worked widely in collaborative science programmes, ranging from genetic tree improvement to silvo-poultry (agroforestry) research. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he created a centre dedicated to hardwood research at Paradise Wood in Oxfordshire, personally planting many tens of thousands of trees. Gabriel played a key role in Our Forests, working with six other leading environmental campaigners during 2010-11 to save England's public forests from government disposal. He has been an active contributor to research, practice and policy in the forestry and land-based sectors in the UK. He has served on a number of boards, including the Woodland Trust's Conservation Advisory Committee, Forestry Commission Advisory Committee, the Board for the UK Tree Charter, and the Forestry and Climate Change Partnership (which he chaired from 2022-24). Gabriel has served as a trustee for Fund4Trees and Woodland Heritage. He regularly gives technical talks and has served as a guest lecturer at the University of Oxford and other academic venues. Gabriel is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.