About the Author

When you ask Basil what he thinks about himself, he’ll tell you he is incredibly lucky. He has family he loves dearly, friends and colleagues who inspire him, and every day he gets to care for trees, soil, and flowers. Helping life flourish brings him so much joy. This includes turning a lawn into a thriving Piedmont Prairie, raising saplings from seeds, teaching his two boys how to find purpose, building an organization that brings good to an increasingly chaotic world, and creating new paradigms that leave life better off than it was yesterday.

He pursues his purpose and passions as the co-founder of Leaf & Limb, a tree care company in Raleigh, NC, and Project Pando, a non-profit that aims to connect people to trees. He is a Treecologist, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist, Duke graduate, and Wizard of Things. He sits on some boards and has won some awards, but he still feels most accomplished when he causes his incredible wife (the real brains behind all of this) to fall into fits of uncontrollable laughter. When he’s not having fun at work, he likes to pull invasive plants from his pocket forests, contemplate on his front porch, and go hiking with his family.

Some random facts about Basil: sometimes he dreams about chocolate-filled taiyaki from Hiroshima. One of his favorite memories is celebrating Winter’s Solstice with his boys on a mountain top in Linville Gorge under a sea of glittering stars. He is a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. If you aren’t familiar with Jiu-Jitsu, it’s an activity where mostly dudes go to a gym in pajamas to attack each other. A week without plenty of reading, intense exercise, and blazing hot peppers is a sad week for Basil. He really, really likes garlic. Basil’s favorite birthday breakfast tradition is to eat one of every type of French pastry at Lucettegrace in downtown Raleigh. And it probably goes without saying, he is not a fan of stuffy bios.