Biography

Dr. Gabriel E. Hemery     BSc Wales, DPhil Oxf, CEnv, MIEEM, FICFor

career • media • specialist publications

Biography

Dr Gabriel Hemery is an author, tree photographer, and silvologist (forest scientist) who writes, lives, and breathes trees.

Dr Gabriel Hemery is an author, tree photographer, and silvologist (forest scientist) who writes, lives, and breathes trees. He has written several fiction and non-fiction books, while his tree photography has adorned books and international advertising campaigns. A forest scientist and chartered forester by profession, Gabriel co-founded Sylva Foundation to help nurture a wood culture across Britain.

Author

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 is currently working on The Forest Guide, a series of three guidebooks featuring more than 1000 of Britain’s most interesting, beautiful and valuable forests, publishing with Bloomsbury Wildlife. His first title with Robinson Books was The Tree Almanac 2024 with a 2025 edition in the making. He had also authored several fiction titles, including two novels, two short story collections, and a poetry anthology. See books.

Photographer

Gabriel is a semi-professional photographer of trees and forests. All the photographs in The Forest Guide series are Gabriel’s, 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. See photography.

Silvologist

Gabriel is a silvologist (forest scientist). He co-founded Sylva Foundation in 2009, and has since led the charity as its Chief Executive.

Gabriel has authored more than 100 technical articles, cited in 1,200 articles by other scientists. He has worked widely in collaborative science programmes, ranging from genetic tree improvement to silvo-poultry 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: 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. Gabriel is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.

Read more about Gabriel Hemery by visiting these pages:

career • media • science publications