Planting a tree is an act of faith, an expression of hope.The Five Acre Forest inspires that hope.In transit from the globe-trotting life of an aid worker, Trish Nicholson came upon an eroded dune beside a lake in New Zealand s far north and felt a strange attachment. The following year, she abandoned her Celtic roots and returned to plant a thousand trees.Twenty years on, the author shares the physical and emotional trials and triumphs of transforming the dune into a five acre forest, and describes the lives of its native trees, birds and insects, enchanting us with local legends and her nature photography along the way.Woven into Nicholson s personal narrative is the deep-time story of an extraordinary landscape of dunes, lakes, swamps and beaches formed from an ancient shared geological ancestry.Heel-on-spade nature writing that is also lyrical, passionate and full of wonder