When I arrived years ago at the piece of land I now garden, I saw it as a blank canvas and set about madly planting things, imagining my efforts would bring every square foot to life. I did not understand then that the heavy lifting had already been done — and probably by some blue jay, or maybe a squirrel.

Douglas W. Tallamy, an entomologist and longtime professor at the University of Delaware, would have known right away what the giant old oak trees along the front property line meant to the place — and to any place.

“There is much going on in your yard that would not be going on if you did not have one or more oak trees gracing your piece of planet earth,” he writes in his new book, “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees.” READ MORE