Description
Tacoma Garden Club looks forward to welcoming Seattle Garden Club members to our Joint Luncheon and Meeting on Wednesday, April 16th at the Tacoma Country and Golf Club. Our speaker will be Amy Stewart, New York Times Best Selling Author of The Drunken Botanist. Amy will speak about her newest book The Tree Collectors, Tales of Arboreal Obsession.
Amy Stewart is the New York Times best-selling author of the The Tree Collectors, The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Plants, and several other popular nonfiction titles about the natural world. She’s also written several novels in her beloved Kopp Sisters series, which are based on the true story of one of America’s first female deputy sheriffs and her two rambunctious sisters.
Her books have sold over a million copies worldwide and have been translated into 18 languages.
She lives in Portland with her husband Scott Brown, a rare book dealer who can usually be found at his shop, Downtown Brown Books.
Amy’s 2009 book Wicked Plants was adapted into a national traveling exhibit that terrified children at science museums nationwide for over a decade. Even better, a few bars around the world are named after The Drunken Botanist.
Amy has won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the American Horticulture Society’s Book Award, the National Outdoor Book Award, and an International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Writing Award.
When Amy Stewart discovered a community of tree collectors, she expected to meet horticultural fanatics driven to plant every species of oak or maple. But she also discovered that the urge to collect trees springs from something deeper and more profound: a longing for community, a vision for the future, or a path to healing and reconciliation.
In this slyly humorous, informative, often poignant volume, Stewart brings us captivating stories of people who spend their lives in pursuit of rare and wonderful trees and are transformed in the process. Vivian Keh has forged a connection to her Korean elders through her persimmon orchard. The former poet laureate W. S. Merwin planted a tree almost every day for more than three decades, until he had turned a barren estate into a palm sanctuary. And Joe Hamilton cultivates pines on land passed down to him by his once-enslaved great-grandfather, building a legacy for the future.
Stewart populates this lively compendium with her own hand-drawn watercolor portraits of these extraordinary people and their trees, interspersed with side trips to investigate famous tree collections, arboreal glossaries, and even tips for “unauthorized” forestry. This book is a stunning tribute to a devoted group of nature lovers making their lives—and the world—more beautiful, one tree at a time.
Date & Time
Wed, Apr 16, 2025 10:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Venue Details
Tacoma Golf & Country Club
13204 Country Club Drive SWLakewood, Washington 98498
