She was born around 1925 in New Zealand, the daughter of farmers.[1] When travel became easier after the Second World War she set off on a traditional grand tour. Her love of trees began in Corsica where she worked for a logging company for five years.[1]
In Hampshire, England, she called upon the tree expert Richard St. Barbe Baker in 1960, and learned about his idea that green wall agriculture could tame the desert.[2][3][4] Campbell-Purdie went to a desert in Tiznit, Morocco, in 1964, and created an oasis with 2,000 trees that she planted. After Algerian Independence, Campbell-Purdie travelled to Algeria, where she was given a 100 hectare plot which had once been a French military dump covered in sheet metal and which received much of the town's waste water. Campbell-Purdie successfully planted 1,000 seedlings and one year later, 800 were still alive. Within four years, some were 12 feet high and she found grain growing among them.[1][2] The Algerian government subsequently offered help and Campbell-Purdie ended up planting 130,000 trees in and around Bou Saada, Algeria under the aegis of the Algerian Red Crescent.[3]
Campbell-Purdie formed the Bou Saada Trust to raise funds to support her "war against the Sahara." Her successes inspired the Algerian government to plant a 12-meter-wide wall of trees from border-to-border across that country.[1]
She left Algeria in 1970, when her health broke down. She appeared as herself on the television game show "To Tell the Truth" in 1973.
Campbell-Purdie died in Athens, Greece, on 20 January 1985, aged 59.
