About the Book: Medicine Tree: Repairing the Rotten Roots of England
Early one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural
Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding
meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood,
brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose
apparently timeless tranquillity like so much of the English countryside masks a
darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.
Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile
valleys are on the front lines of a battle between