Neville Fay gives an engaging and well received lecture at the annual German Tree Care Conference

Neville Fay, our Director and Principal Consultant, has just returned from delivering two presentations to the 2015 German Tree Care Conference at Augsburg near Munich.

When Neville came to the office, he shared his thoughts on his experience:

“ I am grateful to Prof Dirk Dujesiefken for inviting me to present. I was astonished at the scale of this European conference and trade show and at the level, quality and range of the presentations.”

The first lecture, Retrenchment Pruning & Conservation Arboriculture, to 700 or so delegates explored the influences that we have gained from the presence of ancient pollards in the UK landscape, as these have taught us that this historic technique (pollard pruning for a crop) contributes both to tree longevity and the creation of woody habitat.

“This ‘vernacular’ arboriculture has nurtured our ideas of modern conservation arboriculture. The need to conserve as many ancient old trees as possible, including ancient pollards that are prone to disintegration, leads us to develop novel techniques underpinned by working with the trees energy system while taking a long view of management over Tree-Time.”

The second lecture, Conservation Arboriculture – 10 things to know about Habitat Creation, was presented to the Tree Climbing Forum and focused on techniques for decaying wood habitat creation.

“This built on the experience gained from the Ancient Tree Forum, Ted Green’s work over two decades and more recent developments including the VETree European training initiative. It explored the vulnerability of ancient trees and how, where there are significant age gaps between ancient and other age classes in tree populations, the need to create ‘Bridge Habitat’ challenges conventional arboricultural conditioning and leads to practitioners working with fungi, damage, wounding and decay processes.”

“This was a really positive experience. I encountered a really open interest in the theory and practice of conservation arboriculture, the ideas behind retrenchment pruning and the possibility of exploring the transfer of knowledge between different cultures and disciplines. Our work with SAG Baumstatik colleagues, who naturally gravitate to conservation arboriculture, brought me to Augsburg and I will be providing a SAG study workshop in Gauting, Germany on 19^th and 20^th October.”

“The whole experience of communicating and sharing knowledge was greatly helped by Andreas Detter and Erk Brudi (Brudi & Partner TreeConsult), our associate long-standing German friends and colleagues who supported me through translation and with whom I had deep and challenging discussions through their genuine interest in topics related to the tree as an ecosystem.”

Neville will next be presenting a workshop in July at Parco Semiore, Milan for the Italian Society of Arboriculture on ‘Heritage trees – the principles and practice of Conservation Arboriculture’.

He is currently working on the next in the Innovations in Arboriculture Seminar series shortly to be announced.

If you would like to be a part of this engaging topic and carry on the discussion, please make your comments and thoughts known in the comment box below.

You can also make enquiries at info@treeworks.co.uk