A greener vision of Uganda: the slogan for American-born Catherine Watson's newspaper could be "all the news that fits to plant.".

In a continent riveted in war and besieged with AIDs kneels a woman, planting trees. She has captivated the hearts of Ugandans, who have her to thank for the largest tree-growing effort in their country. But 49-year-old Catherine Watson has done more than plant thousands of trees; she has faced cancer, dodged bullets, and strove for justice in the Amazon.

Inspired by Sebastian Walaita, a seed specialist who was captured by rebels as a high school student, Watson had been trying since 1996 to start a newspaper that would address environmental issues.

But it took a London hospital, where she was soothed by the thought of trees while being treated for stage 4 cancer, to push Watson to create the biannual newspaper in 2001. Tree Talk provides students and teachers hands-on experience in forestry; seeds are enclosed in every issue to help create woodlots and promote native species restoration.

In May 2005, Tree Talk was the runner-up for the United Kingdom's principal environmental award, the St. Andrew's Prize for the Environment. There were more than 250 entries from 52 countries.

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"Tree Talk was sort of a present to myself," says Watson. "I have a lot to be thankful for."

The resources to start Tree Talk were pulled from Watson's nonprofit, the Straight Talk Foundation. The foundation, which produces youth newspapers and radio shows, focuses on sexual health, abstinence, puberty, children rights and responsibilities, life skills, and hygiene. Young Talk and Straight Talk, monthly publications with a combined print run of 436,000, are sent to 14,465 schools across Uganda. The "Straight Talk Radio Show," which first aired in May 1999, is 30 minutes long and broadcast in nine African languages.

The two-page newspaper launched February 28, 2002, carrying tree species information, germination instructions, and a message from the minister for the environment. A seed packet with instructions, along with 18 newspapers, was sent to 12,900 primary and 2,500 secondary schools across Uganda.

Watson was not always a journalist living in Uganda. She graduated from Princeton University with a major in biology and minors in Latin American studies and science/human affairs. Her first taste of philanthropy came in 1978, after her studies of Guatemalan health and underdevelopment won Princeton's Latin American thesis prize. For this she spent three months in Guatemala visiting hospitals and interviewing people to get an overview of the health situation.

From Princeton she worked in the World Bank's environment department. However, after failing to stop the World Bank from funding settlements and road projects in the Amazon, she decided to go back to school and opted to study nursing.

"I am glad I did the nursing because I know a lot about health," said Watson. "But I am a polymath--and I love writing and the environment. I could never work just as a nurse. I like having a big picture. Health, families, environment, trees--they are all tied up together."

Watson started writing health and environmental news stories for the BBC and large British newspapers such as The Guardian, The Observer, and The Independent. She also co-authored a book criticizing the World Bank's environmental policy.

Not long after, Watson's husband, William Pike, a journalist who had covered the guerilla war in Uganda, was offered an editorial position with Uganda's main newspaper after the guerillas took power. Despite family members' concerns, the pair traveled to Uganda, which Watson explains "is not Lion King-savannah Africa. It's part of the swath of dark green that goes across Congo to West Africa--big trees like giant broccoli." Living in a country that had suffered under the Amin and Obote regimes, Watson saw the strain of the people, "disoriented by years of bad government."

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As a foreign correspondent, she covered wars in northern Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. During one incident she was dropped by helicopter into a government position, which the rebels then overran.

"I took cover in a foxhole, but then had to flee with the government soldiers through the bush under very heavy incoming fire," Watson remembers. "The government soldiers panicked because the rebels were coming in human waves, as though bullets could not hurt them. I slept in the bush with the soldiers ... Finally a fresh battalion relieved our position. Later I met surrendered rebels who had been at the battle, they said, 'Oh it was you! We saw a white woman running very fast!'"

With her husband, two children, and a 1.5 acre garden full of monkeys and parrots, Watson is not likely to leave Uganda, a country that has thrived since 1986 despite AIDS and rebel attacks.

"I am pretty embedded!" she exclaims. "I also want to plant more trees in Kampala." Watson has been growing trees along a two-mile-long avenue in the city for the past 10 years. Among the species she has planted are flame trees, which grow big enough to arch over the roadway; the African hardwood mvule; and 150 bottlebrush, a red flowering Australian tree. "If I get to retirement age. I'd like to buy land to grow [more] trees."

Her enthusiasm is taking root. After Tree Talk lobbied Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, he issued a directive asking schools to create woodlots; 92 percent have done so. About 28 percent of schools that received the newspaper now have two to five acres of grown trees; 20 percent have more than five acres.

Hoping to spread Tree Talk's success, Watson has written to 35 tree seed centers and forestry departments across Africa and looks forward to the idea being copied. "The combination of a newspaper--cheap newsprint with mass distribution--and a small sachet of seed is a powerful one," she says.

Tree Talk has set a continental standard of environmental excellence, which hopefully will spread to neighboring nations facing deforestation.

James Madison University student Meghan Amoroso was a summer intern in AMERICAN FORESTS' publications department.