Wendy Campbell-Purdie
Wendy Campbell-Purdie – Woman Against the Desert – Africa
Born and raised in New Zealand in the 1920’s, Wendy Campbell-Purdie (1925-1985) branched out internationally and launched several successful tree-planting projects in Africa. She was a pioneer, an international tree-planting leader, and her work was rooted in awareness of the value of trees and associated biodiversity in halting the spread of the desert, providing food (directly and indirectly) for people and livestock, and creating a microclimate that made rain more likely. As she worked in Morocco and Algeria, she also became more and more aware of the value of tree planting and nurturing in offering good employment in areas where unemployment rates were well over 50%. By planting trees on the perimeter of the desert and then by spreading the growth of trees inwards, she argues that it is possible to spread vegetation until it almost entirely covers the world’s biggest desert.
Her love of trees began in Corsica where she worked for a logging company. She began what remained a life-long practice: reading and learning everything she could about all aspects of arboriculture though she never obtained an academic qualification in it. She met Richard St Barbe Baker who’d already founded ‘Men of the Trees’ and begun working on the idea of using trees to change the micro-climates of arid lands and make them fertile. Wendy took on his ideas, realizing from her own experience the value of trees for making topsoil, stabilizing ground-water and creating more likelihood of rain as well as providing food and shelter.
Campbell-Purdie went to a desert in Tiznit, Morocco, in 1964 and created an oasis with 2,000 trees that she planted. After Algeria gained its independence in 1962, she was offered a 100-hectare area of sandy land which had once been a French military dump. It was still covered with scrap metal. There she planted 1,000 seedlings; a year later, 800 were still alive. She had an 80% success rate with the trees and, within 4 years, some were 12’ high and there was grain growing in their shelter. In the first winter, it was 65,000 seedlings: olives, citrus, figs, cypress, acacia and various eucalyptus. Again, she achieved an 80% survival rate despite flash floods, locusts and other vicissitudes.
She went on to plant over 130,000 trees around Bou Saada and formed the Bou Saada Trust to raise money for her war against the Sahara. Today, her 130,000 trees are flourishing. The fertile area they created grows vegetables, grain and citrus fruits. It has given the villagers work and wealth. And it inspired the Algerian government to plant an enormous wall of trees 12 kilometres wide across the country from border to border.Egypt has also been studying Miss Campbell-Purdie’s methods for making the Sahara the green land it was 10,000 years ago.
The words of Isiah came back to me: “The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
Women at the Heart of the Men of the Trees
Book: Woman Against the Desert
