Planting the Nation's ‘Waste Lands’: Walter Scott, Forestry and the Cultivation of Scotland's Wilderness

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In October 1827 the <jats:italic>Quarterly Review</jats:italic> included a review of the second edition of Robert Monteath's <jats:italic>The Planter's Guide and Profitable Planter</jats:italic>. The review was published anonymously according to custom, but the author was Sir Walter Scott. A keen amateur plantsman who would later be involved in producing official reports on tree husbandry in Scotland, Scott's interest in ecology, forestry and the cultural value of landscape was of long standing. He had spent a small fortune on trees for his Abbotsford estate, and the cost had contributed to his insolvency in 1826. The present article looks at Scott's review as a work of Romantic ecocriticism concerned with the relationships between nationhood, economics and natural sustainability. Definitions of ‘waste land’ are considered, and the use of literary references to emphasize the need for sustainable planting is explored along with debates over imported Canadian species of pine. The cultural exchange of trees for people is shown to raise interesting questions, as is the advent of the railways that Scott ignores in his essay despite his interest in that new form of transport.</jats:p>