Gabriel Hemery

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.

He began his career at the Northmoor Trust,^[1] 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.^[2]

He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.^[3]

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.^[4]

In 2022, he was elected chair of the Forestry and Climate Change Partnership ^[5] 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.^[6]

He has written several fiction works including with Unbound Publishing (author page. Unbound Publishing. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78965-023-5. Retrieved 7 January 2019. ) 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.^[7]

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.,^[8] with the Wales guide published in 2025 and the England guide coming 2026.^[9]

He designed and established a new woodland and centre for hardwood forestry research; Paradise Wood.^[10] 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.^[11]). He gained a DPhil degree at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford on the genetic improvement of walnut.^[12] 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.^[13] He then researched and published numerous articles pertaining to the silviculture (e.g.^[14][15]) and genetic^[16] improvement of walnut. He initiated an agroforestry research project in the mid-1990s, combining free-range broiler chicken with newly established woodland.^[17][18]

• Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet – The New Sylva: a discourse of forest and orchard trees for the twenty-first century. 400pp. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). ISBN 978-1408835449.
• Gabriel Hemery – The Forest Guide: Scotland. 320pp. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023). ISBN 978-1472994622.
• Gabriel Hemery – The Tree Almanac 2024. 336pp. (Robinson Books, Little, Brown Book Group, 2023). ISBN 978-1472148490. Foreword by Tracy Chevalier.
• Gabriel Hemery – The Tree Almanac 2025. 346pp. (Robinson Books, Little, Brown Book Group, 2024). ISBN 978-1472149398. Foreword by Levison Wood.
• Gabriel Hemery – The Forest Guide: Wales. 320pp. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025). ISBN 978-1399409124.

• 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.

• Official website of Gabriel Hemery
• Walnut Thesis
• Sylva Foundation
• myForest Project