Cover Artist correction:  Female Ginkgo with Fruit (Ginkgo Biloba) by Robert Llewellyn

Cover photographer Robert Llewellyn first started photographing trees for a book project with garden writer Nancy Ross Hugo, a collaboration that changed the course of his career. “I had always thought of trees as objects in the composition of a photo, not something alive and connected to everything in the ecosystem,” says Llewellyn. “Now I approach trees like I’m meeting someone new. I want to know how they live.” Llewellyn has photographed many artful designs of the plant kingdom in more than 30 books, including Trees Up Close , Seeing Seeds  and Seeing Flowers.  His latest work is The Living Forest: A Visual Journey Into the Heart of the Woods . Through his lush, hyperrealistic close-ups of the natural world, Llewellyn seeks to inspire others to approach flowers, seeds and other forms of plant life with wonder, curiosity and appreciation. He lives with his wife in leafy Albemarle County, Virginia, surrounded by a living library of millions of trees.