David Lloyd-Jones

I started my career in 1985 as a contractor and fortunately by 1987 I had become good enough to travel around the south of the country working for the Corporation of London, the National Trust and various large country estates including the UK base of the Church of Scientology resolving the many tree problems that the storm of October 87 left in its wake.

That event broadened my horizons but Cheshire has always been where I choose to live and work from. I am still one of only a very few contractors approved by the Corporation of London, and for large projects we still travel all over the country.

While I still run a busy contracting company I have also developed a tree consultancy company after completing my Arboricultural Association Technicians Certificate in 1995.

The tree contracting company advertises on www.arbornauts.com and the tree consultancy company on www.treeadvice.com.

Both websites are pioneering online quotations and online consultancy which is the future way that arb contractors and consultants will deal with many simple enquiries. The intention is to maximise my time and minimise my carbon footprint.

As you might expect I have a strong environmental policy and that has led to my developing a website to help utilise the bi-product of the tree contracting www.craftwoods.co.uk. This is another facet of the business that can be developed as a secondary income stream and it supports local enterprises that can use the timber and other products. We even hold timber framing workshops.

We also design and build timber and woodchip "Activity Landscaping" projects using primarily timber and woodchip. I have drawn up a booklet called "The Activity Landscaping Design Guidance Booklet" which is in the form of the National Curriculem and aimed at Key stage 2 children. It gives them guidance on designing their own project that they can get a local contractor to build for them. The booklet is distributed free to schools from the Arbornauts.com website.

My other passion is my research into tree morphology or more specifically the evidence of the evolution of tree morphology. This came from writing an instruction manual for my climbers. That paper has now developed into a guide that any arborist can use to come to understand how trees are designed by evolution to facilitate pruning. I call the paper "Sympathetic and Holistic Tree Management - Reduction Via Thinning".

Arboriculture has given me everything I have but most importantly it gave me the means to raise my 2 daughters on my own. Consequently I feel that I owe trees an immense debt and I try to repay that in many ways including my work with ISA and Consulting Arborist Society.