The Tree Experts: A History of Professional Arboriculture in Britain

Abstract

The publication of the richly illustrated book ‘The Tree Experts, A History of Professional Arboriculture in Britain’, authored by Mark Johnston is timely. As the author so astutely remarks in the volume’s introductory chapter, ‘trees are now in the public eye as never before’. They play an important role in enhancing our quality of life in both urban and rural environments, not only because of their visual and aesthetic qualities, but for a full range of reasons, including their ability to reduce urban heat, their contributions to climate change adaption and the work they do to improve air quality and environmental health, as recently analysed by landscape architects, geographers, ecologists, and psychologists. As The Tree Experts illustrates in fine historical detail, trees have been recognised for their importance to our physical and psychological well-being since the nineteenth century, starting with the Victorian parks movement and the establishment of public parks in England and the United States (Conway, 1991) The role of trees, as this book underlines, has also been increasingly recognised in ecological studies, where they are positioned as an integral part of many ecosystems that continue to provide benefits to wildlife and biodiversity (Johnston & Percival, 2012). Although the subtitle for the book is ‘A history of professional arboriculture in Britain’, do not be misled into thinking this is a book only for the professional arboriculturist. To the contrary, Johnston has produced a meticulously researched publication that will be relevant to practitioners and researchers working in a range of fields: the garden historian, the town planner and the environmentalist, as well as to the arboriculturist. He discusses not only the history of trees but gardening styles, horticultural publications, the tools of the trade, different techniques employed at different times and embedded in different pieces of legislation, thereby taking the reader on a long historical journey from Roman times to the present century. While the book’s primary focus is with developments in Britain, Johnston nonetheless draws in examples of continental influence including, for instance, French innovations in tree propagation and pruning techniques from early medieval times, (p. 172). He also details those influences on the development of urban arboriculture in Britain that emerged from the United States, such as publications on urban trees and the creation of specialist posts in tree management (p. 376). In terms of structure, the volume consists of nine chapters, each of which could be a standalone dissertation on a particular period of horticulture or landscape design. Johnston’s former role as a university lecturer is evident in the way the book is written and presented. Each chapters follows a similar format, beginning with an introduction that sets out the historical context for the period under discussion, reminding us of what was happening in the wider world in regard to political developments, societal changes and economic climate. Each chapter also contains a section on the development of the various arboricultural skills relevant to the period under discussion, as well as, where available, colour and black and white illustrations. While some of these images will be familiar to students of garden history or landscape design, such as those from Thomas Hill’s The Gardener’s Labyrinth, many will be refreshingly new and revealing. Following a detailed introduction, Chapter Two ‘The Romans Bring Arboriculture to Britain’, gives a colourful account of the first examples of trees being used in garden design and possibly, Britain’s first tree experts, the Roman ‘arborator’, a garden worker who was specifically concerned with arboriculture (pp. 30-1). Chapter Three, titled ‘Keeping the Flame Alight in the Dark LANDSCAPE RESEARCH 2022, VOL. 47, NO. 5, 712–716