EA Sustain: The Genius of Trees - Harriet Rix

Trees don’t merely adapt to their environments. In The Genius of Trees, Harriet Rix explores how trees evolved to actively shape the world around them - transforming soils, influencing water systems, moderating climate, and forming complex relationships with fungi, fire, animals, and other plants.

Drawing on ecology, evolutionary history, and deep time, the book reframes trees as dynamic agents in the making of Earth’s living systems, rather than passive background scenery. This is not a sentimental celebration of nature, but a rigorous and eye-opening account of how trees have quietly engineered the conditions for life on Earth.

If you love trees, forests, gardens, rewilding - or simply want to recalibrate your sense of scale (in the universe) - this conversation will change the way you see the living world.