To Speak For The Trees with Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Episode # 007 DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER is a world-recognized botanist, medical biochemist and author, whose work uniquely combines western scientific knowledge and the traditional concepts of the ancient world. Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America--which won the National Arbor Day Foundation Award for exemplary educational work on trees and forests--Time Will Tell, and A Garden for Life. Her new book is To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom To A Healing Vision of the Forest.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger has a feature documentary Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom Of Trees with a free App that shows you the native trees in your region and its medicinal uses.

The International Handbook of Forest Therapy  published by Cambridge University Press, sponsored by the World Health Organization, is where Diana recently contributed her peer reviewed research on trees. Diana Beresford Kroeger's science on trees is now world recognized.

The following is part of the podcast interview with Diana Beresford-Kroeger. Please visit my website Treesmendus.com for a more complete summary of our wonderful one hour conversation. My first question: 

Would you please tell us your story and why you wrote To Speak For The Trees? 

"I was orphaned as a child in Ireland. When orphaned, nobody going to speak for you. Normally orphans are sent to orphanages". 

Diana Beresford-Kroeger was the last in the ancient lineage of  Irish and British aristocracy on both sides. The judge in charge of her case, when she was just 8 years old, said "I have no idea what to do with you, and I am afraid I will lose my job if I put a Beresford in an orphanage."

Diana was put into the care of her Uncle Pat, a famous athlete in his time, a bibliophile (the house was teaming with books) and eccentric bachelor. As Diana says "he did not harm me, but just did not know how to care for a child. Looking back wonder how did survive such a thing?"

Beresford-Kroeger said she got lucky. The ancient plan of the Celtic system was respected. In the summers she was sent into the Valley of Lisheens as the last child of that family to learn the ancient medicines and laws of the trees.