Speakers
Dan Crowley
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI)
Arboreta and Tree Conservation
Tree collections have long played an important role in science and research, and in the midst of the current plant extinction crisis, they have a vital role to play in species conservation. One in three tree species are threatened with extinction in the wild, so ensuring that they are conserved in ex situ living collections is critical to avoid species extinctions. While some tree species can be conserved in seedbanks, some of our most iconic groups, including oaks, maples and magnolias, cannot be stored as seed and thus can only be conserved as living plants. Several threatened species are currently represented by only few individuals in collections and creating resilient, genetically comprehensive collections is a crucial part of integrated species conservation programmes.
Biography
Dan Crowley is a dendrologist and plant conservationist. He works for Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), managing their Global Conservation Consortia initiative, which addresses the conservation needs of highly threatened plant groups. He is a member of the IUCN SSC Global Tree Specialist Group and was a lead author on the Red List of Acer: revised and extended, published in 2020. Prior to working for BGCI Dan worked as Dendrologist at Westonbirt, The National Arboretum, where he verified the identity of representatives of selected genera in the collection and led international wild seed collecting expeditions. A maple specialist, he writes for a range of audiences on all things trees and co-authored The Lives of Leaves, published by Two Roads in 2021. Dan holds a Master’s degree in Plant Diversity from the University of Reading.
Catherine Nuttgens
Sheffield City Council
Presentation: Love your trees!
How to successfully grow trees in schools and other shared green spaces.
The talk will cover:
- Benefits of trees in school
- How to plan and deliver a tree project
- Common problems and how to avoid them
- Love your trees - Looking after trees once planted
- Looking after the trees you already have.
Biography
Catherine Nuttgens is the Community Forestry Manager for Sheffield City Council. She has a project management background connecting people to nature and landscape; as well as working in arboriculture in the urban environment. Her projects have included themes such as landscape heritage, ancient woodland, art and crafts, outdoor play and forest schools. She also has worked as a tree officer for Sheffield City Council for a number of years which covered all aspects of tree risk management and trees in relation to planning.
Through her work in Community Forestry, she is interested in exploring mutually beneficial ways in which urban communities can work with nature. By encouraging people to have positive experiences such as planting and caring for trees and woodland in their community, she hopes that this will increase community wellbeing, whilst trees and woodland will be held in high value and are sustained and protected by people in the future.
Becki Gawthorpe
Forestry Commission
Presentation: What’s hitchhiking on you?
Who doesn’t love trees, and spending time outdoors, visiting woods and forests? Unfortunately, that can also include some unwelcome visitors. Non-native tree pests and diseases can have a significant impact on our landscape and the places we like to visit. However, there are a few simple steps that we can take to help limit their spread and the damage they can cause. Please join me to find out how these unwelcome visitors arrive here in the United Kingdom, what to look out for, and most importantly, what you can do to help.
Biography
After obtaining my BSc in Arboriculture in 2010, I spent seven years working as a tree consultant in the southeast before joining the Forestry Commission in 2017 as one of their Biosecurity Officers. I’m part of the Plant Health Forestry Team and have a national role tasked with developing and updating tree health and biosecurity related policy and guidance. I assist with the development of communication materials and help raise awareness of tree health through many different outreach activities. I work closely with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, ensuring advice and guidance is audience-led and practical, and reflects current scientific understanding. I am also on standby to assist with outbreak situations when they occur. I love my role as it involves meeting new people and spreading the word about how we can protect our trees, woods and forests. I am a long-standing member of the Arboricultural Association and the Institute of Chartered Foresters.
Andy Tipping
London Tree Officers Association
Presentation: Local Authority Tree Officer roles
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Biography
Trees & Woodlands Manager at London Borough of Barnet. Began working with trees in early 1987, six months before the great storm and following a short arborist career, has been working in Local government since 1995. He is a Chartered Arboriculturist with ICF and qualifications include Professional Diploma in Arboriculture (Level 6).
Has contributed to LTOA publications including Risk Limitation Strategy and CAVAT. Has worked on BS 8545, Joint Mitigation Protocol and was one of the principal authors of National Tree Safety Group: Common Sense Risk Management of Trees.
Executive member of LTOA and past chairman, his main interests are regarding urban trees especially with regard to defending unjustified removal demands in subsidence cases.
David Johnson
Barcham Trees
Presentation: Tree Growing & nursery production methods
Will be explaining the different tree growing methods tree nurseries use , from Bare root to container trees and the various advantages and disadvantages they offer.
Biography
Joined Notcutts Nurseries in 1978 as a nursery apprentice, studying at Hadlow College went on to Qualify as a nursery craftsman .Worked in many departments at Notcutts including 16 years as Despatch & Transport manager and in my final few years moved into the main sales office as Sales executive to the Trade and local Authority.
Joined Barham Trees in 2004 as a member of the sales team, now advises on species selection and best planting practice for commercial and private planting schemes.
Kieron Doick
Forest Research
Presentation: Tree Cover where you live, and why care
Do you know how many trees there are where you live? Do you know why it’s interesting, even important, to know? Did you know that you can assess tree cover yourself and that it’s free and easy to do so? In a recent study by Forest Research we learnt that a third of people would like more trees where they live and that they also felt that tree cover was unfairly shared across communities. This despite few actually knowing what their tree cover is. In this talk we’ll visit the benefits of trees in towns and cities, learn how to measure it and track change, and introduce you to the results of a long-running citizen science project that has sought to measure tree canopy cover for all the electoral wards of the UK.
Biography
Kieron Doick is Head of the Urban Forest Research Group (UFoRG) at Forest Research. UFoRG delivers scientific knowledge on the UK’s urban forests, defined as ‘all the trees in and around the urban realm’. Kieron gained his PhD at Lancaster University studying the fate of organic contaminants in soil, before joining the Group in 2005. Kieron’s research interests include the quantification and assessment of urban forests across the UK, quantifying the role of urban forests in delivering ecosystem service benefits to society, and the socio-ecological and urban resilience of urban forests to climate change. He has a particular interest in the climate mitigation (cooling) role of urban greenspaces and methods to value ecosystem services provided by urban trees. @KieronDoickFR
Emma Gilmartin
Woodland Trust
Presentation: Living Legends
Some trees are unmistakeable giants, some may be as old as Stonehenge, while others are home to rare and mysterious creatures. These are more than just trees, these are living legends.
Trees have a talent for extreme longevity; our ancient trees have seen huge landscape change and major historical events. However, they’ve also been part of the everyday lives of generations of local people. This means that ancient trees are not only precious natural monuments, but cultural ones too.
In this talk we’ll discuss the value of ancient trees for people and nature. Please join me to find out why they’re tough yet also vulnerable, and how you can help to map, champion, and protect them.
Biography
Emma Gilmartin is a Conservation Adviser at the Woodland Trust. She specialises in the ecology and wildlife value of trees. Before joining the Woodland Trust in 2019, Emma gained her PhD at Cardiff University, researching wood decaying fungi in living beech trees with Professor Lynne Boddy. She has a background in recording fungi and plants across the UK, and loves to help others to identify and appreciate them. Emma helped to take ‘Unsung Heroes of the Planet’—the world’s first fungal opera—to the Green Man Festival in 2017, and she supports the Ancient Tree Forum and the British Mycological Society.
Lynne Boddy
Cardiff University
Presentation: Trees and their fungus partners
Trees use energy from sunlight to make carbohydrates during photosynthesis. This fuels not only their growth but ultimately the whole of the ecosystems that they dominate. Trees provide huge benefits to humans and the natural environment, such as providing habitat for many organisms, removing atmospheric pollutants, preventing soil erosion, cooling streets and cities, and having hugely advantageous psychological effects. However, they do not, indeed cannot, do this alone. Every tree on the planet is partnered by fungi, most obviously as mutualistic associations with their roots (called mycorrhizas), but also cryptically with endophytic (literally meaning within a plant) fungi in their leaves, stems, roots – in fact probably all tissues. They are also indirectly dependent on fungi, since fungi are the major rotters of dead plant tissues – especially when they contain lignin, and hence they are the major recyclers of nutrients, ultimately making nutrients available again for continued plant growth. This talk will explore these partnerships between fungi and trees.
Biography
Lynne Boddy is Professor of Fungal Ecology at Cardiff University UK. She has taught and researched into the ecology of fungi associated with trees and wood decomposition for 40 years. She is currently studying the fascinating communities of fungi and other organisms that rot the centres of old trees, the ash dieback fungus that is rampaging across the UK from Europe, the ways in which fungi fight each other and form communities, how they search the forest floor for food resources and respond to their finds, and how climate change is affecting fungi. She is a prolific author having co-authored “Fungal Decomposition of Wood” and “The Fungi”, her most recent (early 2021) being “Fungi and Trees: their Complex Relationships”, and the children’s book “Humongous Fungus”. She has edited six books, published over 300 scientific papers, and is chief editor of the journal Fungal Ecology. She was (2009–2010) president of the British Mycological Society. Lynne is an ardent communicator of the mysteries and importance of the amazing hidden Kingdom of Fungi to the general public including TV, radio, popular talks, videos, articles and exhibitions. She was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2019 for Services to Mycology and Science Outreach.
Tony Kirkham
Presentation: Trees for the Future
With the ever-increasing threats to our trees in the landscape from pests and diseases and climate change, we need to be more adventurous with our tree selection for future plantings if we are to have a treescape for the future. We need more diversity in our plantings and must avoid a monoculture planting. This will mean that we must integrate exotics with native species, and we must be planting nursery stock that will make shade trees when mature and not stick to planning pioneer species because they are easy to establish, albeit for a short time. The talk will explore potential species that we can plant in new planting schemes in the future.
Biography
In July 2020 he retired as the Head of the Arboretum, and Horticultural Services, where he was responsible for the management and curation of over 14,000 trees in the collections.
He has led several plant collecting expeditions to Chile and the Far East of Asia, including China, Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, and Russia and has co-authored books on his travels.
In 2004 he completed the revision of the “Pruning of Trees Shrubs and Conifers” with Timber Press and more recently written “Essential Pruning Techniques” and in 2019 the “Haynes Workshop manual of Trees”, and “Remarkable Trees” for Thames Hudson. His latest book is called “Growing Trees” and is a general guide to growing trees in the garden.
He has featured on several tree related TV programmes and lectures internationally and regularly writes many articles and papers.
He chairs the RHS woody plant committee and the IDS Trees & Shrubs Online, and is a member of Action Oak, the Queen’s Green Canopy committees and is a trustee and chairman of the advisory board at the Chelsea Physic Garden and TROBI, (Tree Register of the British Isles).
In 2009 he was awarded the Associate of Honour by the RHS for distinguished service to horticulture, the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour and an MBE in 2019 for services to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Arboriculture and made an Honorary Lifetime fellow of the Arboricultural Association in 2015. He was made the Vice President of the Arboricultural Society and awarded the AA Lifetime achievement award in 2019.
Jeremy Barrell
Barrell Tree Consultancy
Presentation: Getting to the top of the tree; a tree consultant’s tale
If you have a passion for nature and the outdoors, and like getting your hands dirty, then working with trees can be a great career choice for a healthy and happy future when you are young and full of energy. It is satisfying work to grow new trees from seed in the nursery, plant them in the landscape, prune them as they mature, and finally fell them ready for the next generation to be planted. But what happens as you get older, and the work gets harder, and you can’t quite do as much as you could when you were younger?
One option is to use all that practical experience gained from those years of work to your advantage, and move on to advising others on how to manage their trees from a position of knowledge. Indeed, many of the UK’s top consultants started on the tools, and it is that experience that provides the tree-care insights needed to make well-informed management decisions.
In this short presentation, Jeremy will chart his career progress from a ground worker with a tree surgery company to become a highly accomplished consultant acting as an expert witness and speaking all over the world on the cutting-edge tree management developed in the UK.
If you are interested in a career in arboriculture, no matter what your background, this talk will provide insights into what it takes to get to the top and how important practical experience is as a building block towards becoming a successful tree consultant.
Biography
Jeremy Barrell is the Managing Director of Barrell Tree Consultancy www.barrelltreecare.co.uk, one of Britain’s leading planning and legal tree management practices. He is an author and accomplished expert witness, with a practical background focusing on delivering realistic solutions rather than academic nonsense.
Jim Mullholland
BATS Research and Training Services
Presentation: Bats and trees
The UK is home to 17 species of bats, all of which are reliant on trees to varying degrees: Trees provide a source of food for bats, by supporting a vast array of insects and other small invertebrates; trees create linear features that allow bats to disperse through the landscape without predation; and trees offer homes for bats inside cavities, behind lifted bark or inside splits.
Bats are one group of animals that take advantage of the growth, damage and decay of trees. These processes provide abundant food and shelter for our bat species. Indeed, many of our rarest bat species prefer to live in trees over buildings, caves, etc.
But what type of trees do bats use and what can we do to protect their homes to ensure their survival? Come along and find out more about the relationships between bats and trees.
Biography
Jim is Director of BATS Research and Training Services, an organisation which strives for a world where bats are better understood, and their wild habitats cared for.
Jim is an ecologist and arboriculturist with dual specialisms of bats and veteran trees. He has been researching bats since 2005. He is an accomplished public speaker and training provider.
John Parker
Arboricultural Association
Presentation: An introduction to arboriculture
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Biography
John spent ten years as the Senior Arboriculture & Landscape Specialist at Transport for London (TFL). He was Chair of the London Tree Officers Association (LTOA) from 2016-2018. John holds a BSc in Arboriculture & Urban Forestry from Myerscough, is a Professional member of the AA (MArborA), Chartered Arboriculturist (MICFor) and Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv).
John has been incredibly active in the european arboricultural community in recent years having worked on projects in conjunction with the European Arboricultural Council in the Baltic states. In 2017, John’s hard work for the LTOA and his efforts to bring together arboriculture and urban forestry across Europe, were recognised at the European Forum on Urban Forestry, where he received the prestigious ‘European Young Urban Forester of the Year’ award. John joined the Arboricultural Association in 2019 as Senior Technical Officer and became its Chief Executive Officer in 2021.
Starting from 2pm each day. Visit event and see sign up boards for more details.