Backyard Woodland

“A godsend to private landowners.” – Chuck Leavell, Georgia landowner and keyboardist for The Rolling Stones“Backyard Woodland is a practical, jargon-free guide for landowners looking to better enjoy and care for their wooded acreage.” – Forest Business Network“The many small, privately held patches of wooded land in North America add up to a very considerable portion of our continent’s forest legacy. Joshua VanBrakle’s Backyard Woodland advises smallholders about both managing and enjoying their forested parcels. What makes his book especially valuable is that its many practical suggestions about such topics as working with foresters and loggers, avoiding erosion, and controlling exotic invasives are consistently related to larger ecological realities and to the aesthetic and spiritual foundations of forest stewardship. In attempting such a synthesis, this book is a timely successor to Aldo Leopold’s For the Health of the Land.” – John Elder, Vermont landowner and author of Reading the Mountains of Home

Josh VanBrakle is the Research Forester for the New York City Watershed Agricultural Council and has worked with private woodland owners for over five years. He holds an M.S. in Forest Resources Management from the State University of New York. He lives in the Catskills with his wife.