Guy Sternberg

Starhill Forest Arboretum, Petersburg, Illinois    (www.StarhillForest.com)

 

Education                    Purdue University, Bachelor of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, 1970

Pi Alpha Xi Honor Society

 

Responsibility            Arboretum manager, consultant, and lecturer                        

                                                                       

Registration               Illinois Landscape Architect (retired) License No. 157-000197

                                                International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist IL-0669

 

Experience                

 

               Guy Sternberg served on the staff of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for 32 years, receiving the Honor Award for outstanding service. He has been granted an honorary adjunct research appointment to the Illinois State Museum Botany Department and adjunct faculty positions in Biology at Illinois College and at the School of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Guy is a charter life member and past chapter president of the Illinois Native Plant Society.  He holds life memberships in the International Society of Arboriculture (from which he received a Special Recognition Award for his work with historic trees), the International Dendrology Society, and American Forests. Guy also is a founding life member, past president, and journal editor for the International Oak Society, with members from more than 35 countries on six continents, and received their Lifetime Service Award in 2003.

                Guy has cultivated and studied trees since 1952 and now holds one of the most extensive oak genus (Quercus) living reference collections in North America at Starhill Forest, his research arboretum, where he and his wife Edie also grow more than 500 taxa of other woody plants. Starhill Forest is described in the American Association of Museums Directory, the American Horticultural Society's North American Horticulture Reference Guide, and Jacobs' Gardens of North America and Hawaii, and was featured in the 1994 educational film The Greenday Kids Learn About Trees and a 2007 PBS special for Illinois Stories, WSEC TV. Guy has nominated more state tree champions than anyone else in Illinois (plus a few national champions) and works with the National Famous and Historic Tree Program and the Champion Trees Project to promote awareness and appreciation of special and historic trees. He has consulted on tree management for the Illinois Office of the Attorney General, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the Illinois Department of Military Affairs, the Illinois Capital Development Board, the Illinois Supreme Court, and the National Park Service. He has traveled widely studying trees and their habitats, and participated in educational exchanges with the national dendrology societies of Germany and Belgium, the TEMA Foundation of Turkey, the Kunming Institute of Botany in China, and arboreta throughout North America, Europe, and Latin America.

                He lectures frequently for various colleges, trade and professional organizations, and other institutions, and works on preservation of historic trees. His public service work includes helping the Illinois Capital City of Springfield as the tree consultant and propagator for a special tree nursery serving Oak Ridge Cemetery, the setting of President Abraham Lincoln's Tomb. This project has been registered as a National Living Memorial Site by the US Forest Service.

 

Publications

 

                    Guy has provided papers and photographs for American Nurseryman, Arborist News, Tree Care Industry, American Homestyle and Gardening, Wildflower, Midwest Living, Garden Gate, American Horticulturist, Oak News and Notes, Weedpatch Gazette, American Gardener, Landscape Architecture, Fine Gardening, Country Woman, Old House Journal, Organic Gardening, Great Plants, and Chicagoland Gardening. He has published scientific papers in International Oaks (the journal of the International Oak Society, for which he also serves as co-editor), the International Plant Propagators Society Proceedings, the New York State Museum Bulletin, and the French Bulletin de l' Association des Parcs Botaniques. He served as English version editor for the Chinese Seed Plants of the Big Bend Gorge of Yalu Tsangpo in Southeast Tibet by Hang and Zhou. He performs technical reviews for the National Arbor Day Foundation‛s Library of Trees series, and supplied photographs for the US Forest Service Field Guide to Native Oak Species of Eastern North America and for educational posters and web pages by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Live Oak Society.

                He is the principal author (with Jim Wilson of The Victory Garden Public Television series) and photographer for Landscaping with Native Trees, a reference book for natural landscape management. He prepared a comprehensive, 550-page sequel to that volume titled Native Trees for North American Landscapes, released in January 2004, which won national awards from the National Arbor Day Foundation and the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.  Guy was a contributor to the World List of Threatened Trees project of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, England (funded by the Government of the Netherlands) and served as a taxonomic reviewer for Quercus in Flora of North America. He is a contributing author and volume editor for the World Compendium of Oaks  under development in Düsseldorf (published in German by the Langeneicker Eichen Archiv).  Guy also has been a contributor for several volumes in Houghton-Mifflin's Taylor's Guide garden encyclopedia series, including Taylor's Master Guide to Gardening, and for Taunton Press, Ortho, Timber Press, Reader's Digest, Houghton-Mifflin, Meredith, Better Homes & Gardens, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden horticulture books.