Guy Sternberg

He is the author (with Jim Wilson of The Victory Garden public television series) and photographer for Landscaping with Native Trees. He prepared a comprehensive, 550-page sequel to that volume titled Native Trees for North American Landscapes, released in January 2004, which won national awards from the National Arbor Day Foundation and the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries. His most recent volume in that series, self-published in 2021, is Native Trees of North America. Guy was a contributor to the World List of Threatened Trees project of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, England (funded by the Government of the Netherlands) and served as a taxonomic reviewer for Quercus in Flora of North America. He is a contributing author and volume editor for the World Compendium of Oaks prepared in Düsseldorf (published in German by the Langeneicker Eichen Archiv). Sternberg also has been a contributor for several volumes in Houghton-Mifflin's Taylor's Guide garden encyclopedia series, including Taylor's Master Guide to Gardening, and for Taunton Press, Ortho, Timber Press, Reader's Digest, Houghton-Mifflin, Meredith, Better Homes & Gardens, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden horticulture books.

Sternberg served on the staff of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for 32 years, receiving the Honor Award for outstanding service. He has been granted an adjunct research appointment to the Illinois State Museum Botany Department and an adjunct faculty position in Biology at Illinois College. Sternberg is a charter life member and past chapter president of the Illinois Native Plant Society. He also holds life memberships in the International Society of Arboriculture (from which he received a Special Recognition Award for his work with historic trees), the International Dendrology Society, and American Forests. Sternberg is a founding life member, past president, and past journal editor for the International Oak Society, with members from more than 35 countries on six continents, and received their Lifetime Service Award in 2003. He received the Bellrose Award from the Illinois State Journal-Register in 2009 for his lifetime achievements in natural resources.

Sternberg has cultivated and studied trees since 1952 and has assembled one of the largest PCN oak genus (Quercus) living reference collections for North America at Starhill Forest, his research arboretum. He has developed and introduced more than 30 tree cultivars. He and his wife Edie grow more than 2500 accessioned taxa of woody plants at Starhill Forest. The arboretum is described in the American Association of Museums Directory, the American Horticultural Society's North American Horticulture Reference Guide, and Jacobs' Gardens of North America and Hawaii, and was featured in the 1994 educational film The Greenday Kids Learn About Trees and a 2007 PBS special for Illinois Stories, WSEC TV. It was one of 30 worldwide arboreta featured in the New Trees book compiled in 2009 by John Grimshaw for the International Dendrology Society, and has been dedicated in trust to Illinois College.

Guy Sternberg (born 1947) is the owner and operator of Starhill Forest Arboretum in Petersburg, Illinois. He is an arborist, author of books on oaks and is a founding member of the International Oak Society, tree consultant, and lecturer.