About Hemiboreal

The Hemiboreal Nature Guild is a nature journal club and learning collective.  

Open to all skill levels, Hemiboreal is both a practice and an unstructured group: documenting seasonal changes, wildlife, and landscapes while fostering connection and creativity in nature.

This space loosely connects nature enthusiasts tending to and exploring urban spaces, hemiboreal forests, and coastal ecosystems across the Canadian Maritimes through journaling, art, cultivation and nature observation.

Generally overlapping with the Wabanaki-Acadian forest in the Maritimes, the hemiboreal zone is a transitional forest between temperate and boreal regions, featuring a mix of coniferous and deciduous trees like spruce, fir, maple, and birch, but also hemlock, pine, red oak and ash. With cold winters and warm summers, it supports diverse wildlife and bridges the boreal forests of the north with the temperate forests to the south.

Hemiboreal regions are among the places where the seasons exhibit the most variation throughout the year, making them a great part of the world to visit repeatedly at different times! It's even better if you live here, because you can enjoy all the landscape's colours.

See the map of Eastern North America below, where the Hemiboreal range is marked by the Bunchberry photos (note that this is a stylistic choice, and that the Hemiboreal regions do not overlap directly with the range of the plant).

Data : Brandt, J.P. 2009. The extent of the North American boreal zone. Dossiers environnement 17: 101-161.

I’m Samuel LeGresley, and I curate this space. I work in environmental communications and spend a lot of time paying attention to plants, seasons, and how people relate to the living world.

Hemiboreal, particularly its blog, is where I share notes from that practice. They are short texts and graphics, shaped by thinking things through, in and out of natural spaces. Some are finished pieces, and others are closer to field notes.

This work used to be shared under the name WildflowerSeeds.org. The name changed as the scope widened.

I’m based in Canada, where the seasons are harsh and set the rhythm of daily life. I spend a lot of time observing that change and our connection to the natural world we’re part of.

Do you live near the hemiboreal zone and want to participate? Do you have an interest for nature and want to share it?

Contact us at hemiboreal(at)gmail.com to know more or to join the club.