This week started with a trip to Barcham trees, for one of their fantastic seminars about Urban tree Management from a Canadian perspective.
Phillip van Wassenaer and Alex Satel run Urban Forest Innovations inc, a Canadian arboricultural consultancy practice, and made the trip over to show us how they manage urban trees in Canada.
From the get go you could tell these guys knew their stuff and spend a lot of time explaining tree benefits to non-tree people at councils/municipalities and can put an actual figure to these benefits as well as the costs to keep them and how. But it also highlighted the fact that tree men in Canada and America are held in much higher esteem than their uk counterparts and have got the hang of selling themselves.
How do they do that then?
They start with four simple goals that are all dependent on data, information, call it what you like, but these guys collect it, with a focus on quality not quantity, and then put it to good use. This is in complete contrast to the UK where most councils don’t have a clue what trees they’ve got or where they are, let alone what condition there in and where the vast majority of UK tree men just think it’s all about chainsaws and chippers.
These guys know how to present this as well, without a hint of arrogance or over complication that can be found in uk arb. Their obviously incredibly intelligent chaps but they only use complicated terms when there really needed and focus on the putting information across that everyone can understand.
There was a lot more to this seminar than can be put into a blog but this, along with Ted Greens talk, was one of the best seminars I’ve been to and I’ll hold my hand up and freely admit that I’ve already started incorporating some of their points into my own work.
If anybody wants to learn more a bit about these guys if you follow this link it’ll take you to their website.
As always big thanks to the guys at Barcham Trees, they don’t charge for these seminars and are really one of the few companies that are trying to push UK arboriculture to the next level. If you want to buy some quality trees then follow this link and you can see what they have.
Anyway thanks for reading and hopefully we’ll hear from you all soon.