London's Street Trees

Three years ago the idea of a whole book about London's street trees seemed somewhat esoteric - weren't they all just London Planes? But Paul Wood's brilliant and acclaimed book has gone on to sell 5,000 copies in three printings, and become a fixture in London's bookshops and museum and gallery gift shops, while the author is still busy leading his popular 'street tree walks' every weekend somewhere in the capital. And its revelations that London's streets are actually an amazing 'urban arboretum' where you can find everything from Magnolias to Olive trees, Persian Silkwoods to Giant Redwoods, have even led local tree groups to plant the rare species featured in it to beautify their own streets. Now, to take account of all the new species planted on the capital's streets since the first edition - from Persimmons to Pecans - Safe Haven is publishing a new, expanded, fully revised edition, that includes not only more trees but more of its hugely popular tree-walk routes. It should sell even better.

The first guide to reveal the full, amazing variety of London's street tree population is now an agenda-setting, canonical work. Paul Wood's brilliant and acclaimed London's Street Trees sold out three printings in its first 2017 edition, two more in its expanded 2020 edition, and in 2024 is republished yet again in a completely revised and further extended edition. But London's Street Trees has needed to be revised and expanded again, because the capital's street tree population has continued to grow and gloriously diversify. Every month boroughs all over the capital are planting new species, from winter-flowering cherries to brighten up winter to Hackney's shocking pink-flowering Toona sinensis.