It tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful singlehanded effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps, near Provence, throughout the first half of the 20th century.

In 1988, Frédéric Back won an Academy Award for the animated short film The Man Who Planted Trees (L'homme qui plantait des arbres).

The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness.

He runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings.

The shepherd, Elzéard Bouffier, after being widowed, decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by single-handedly cultivating a forest, by planting acorns.

The valley receives official protection after the First World War, with the French authorities mistakenly believing that the rapid growth of the new forest is a bizarre natural phenomenon, as they are unaware of Bouffier's selfless deeds.

Many readers believed that Elzéard Bouffier was a genuine historical figure and that the narrator of the story was a young Jean Giono himself, and that the tale is part autobiographical.

In 1992, the American radio show Hearts of Space did a musically accompanied reading (episode 290, first aired on 15 May) with narration by Robert J. Lurtsema.

Gallimard Jeunesse produced a French version in 2010 of 'L'homme qui plantait des arbres', read by Jacques Bonnaffé.