See Nature
with New Eyes
Discover
the Living Landscape
When you begin to recognize the plants around you, your relationship with the natural world changes.
A walk through the woods becomes a conversation with familiar neighbors. Parks, trails, and open spaces begin to reveal patterns and relationships that were always there, waiting to be noticed. Your backyard becomes an ecosystem. What once felt like a uniform forest becomes a living, layered community.
Tree Lovers School, led by experienced botanical educator Carrie Blair, exists to support this shift from simply being in nature to truly understanding and appreciating it.
Ways to Learn
Tree Lovers School offers several ways to begin learning the plants around you, whether in the field, in a classroom, or through written and visual resources. Programs can be adapted for varying audiences (individuals, small groups, homeschool students, community organizations) and experience levels (from beginners to experienced gardeners and conservation groups).
Meet Carrie Blair
Tree Lovers School is led by Carrie Blair, an educator who has spent more than four decades studying trees and plants through field exploration, seminars, courses, plant walks with other botanists, active membership in botanical societies, and extensive independent study.
Her interest in plants began with a transformative experience — encountering a hillside filled with spring wildflowers — and grew into a lifelong practice of observation, study, and teaching.
Now based in Brevard, Transylvania County, North Carolina, Carrie continues to explore the forests and landscapes of the southern Appalachians and share what she has learned through Tree Lovers School.
Carrie is especially skilled at identifying plants using subtle cues — leaf scars, twig structure, bark patterns, bud arrangement, flower form, growth habits, and seasonal changes. She delights in helping students:
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Recognize patterns in plant families
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Remember scientific names using mnemonics and associations
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Understand native and non-native species
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See familiar landscapes with new eyes
Tree Lovers School helps to foster the thrill of recognition — the moment when a tree or wildflower becomes a familiar friend rather than a mysterious stranger.
From Knowledge to Stewardship
Understanding Leads to Care
Learning to recognize plants often leads to a deeper awareness of the challenges facing the natural world. When you know what grows around you, you begin to notice changes in the landscape — invasive species spreading, habitats shifting, and the effects of how land is used and managed.
Plants aren't just part of the scenery — they form the foundation of the entire food web. Many birds, for example, depend on native plants to survive. As entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown, a single pair of Carolina chickadees raising their young may need to gather thousands of caterpillars in just a few weeks. These soft-bodied insects are essential food for nestlings — adult birds can survive on the contents of your bird feeder, but baby birds can't eat hard bird seed. The caterpillars that nestlings need are best supported by native plant communities, not ornamental or invasive species. We can support healthy populations of native insects by providing a variety of native flowering plants.
Tree Lovers School encourages not only awareness and understanding, but also responsibility, such as supporting conservation organizations, volunteering, or making more thoughtful choices about the land you care for. As Carrie often reminds her students:
“It’s up to all of us to improve the health of our world for future generations.”
Other Services Offered by Tree Lovers School
