Mark Hartley – Consulting Arborist

Industry: Agriculture / Horticulture

Mark didn’t want to work with trees. Not one bit. His family worked as arborist practioners - in general removal and pruning of trees. He had worked with them during holidays, but wanted to be a theologian. When the challenge was put to his by his family to ‘do better’ – he then took up the challenge and began working with trees.

Arboriculture is a subset of agriculture and involves the pruning of trees and the removal of trees to keep them healthy and manageable.

Mark is a consulting arborist, which focuses on the diagnosis, protection systems and monitoring of trees. This involves problem solving, using diagnostic skills and a different kind of thinking from being a practitioner – and Mark woud know, for he spent several years as a practitioner with his own business. He’s now been in the industry for 30 years.

Mark’s philosophy for working with trees stemmed from a rather different background to that of his parents. In the 1970s, he reveals, the attitude to arboriculture was one in which tree lopping was the done thing. However, through to the 1990s, influential writers from the U.S. helped Australian arborists to re-evaluate their attitude to their work.

Writers like Richard Harris and Alex Shigo, the latter of whom Mark became close friends with through his travels overseas, revealed that this practice of lopping was harming the trees and perpetuating the problem: improper cuts would lead to infection and weaken the tree. Authours such as these quite crucially influenced Mark’s philosophy and practise with working trees.

In researching and diagnosis, Mark focuses on problems with trees, for example identifying diseases from which a tree is suffering. It’s his job to pinpoint the problem. One experience he shared was when he recently went to the Sydney Olympic Park to see why some Brushboxes were stressed. It was caused by sap-sucking insects that couldn’t be seen. So Mark needed to determine the species of the insect, and work out a management protocol in order to resurrect these trees.

Mark ponders why tree removal is something desired in the city, and not just conservation, which is all his business now focuses on – and possibly our culture, in the city, is just used to seeing cement.

“Even within schools, shade areas are being put up instead of just trees used for shade. Our legal system, too, encourages people to be not be harmed and some people see trees as a threat.”

However, Mark assesses, this is generally a result of ignorance.

What personal qualities are needed for the job?

For a consultant: an inquisitive nature, good observations skills, good reasoning skills.

For a practitioner: good organisation skills, good spatial analysis, strength: as it is hard physical work. Being young and not being afraid as risks are involved is also a bonus.

The best part of the job?

The diagnosis is the best part of the job. The complex diagnosis, the forensic side of it – for example if a tree is damaged, if it was hit by a car, when did it happen, which direction did it come from? I once did a study of every recorded wind gust in Canberra, to see how, or if, the trees were affected.

Most challenging part?

The paperwork. Even a simple diagnosis leaves 30 minutes of paperwork! Typing reports is when then intellectual challenge has finished.

Advice?

Someone who wants to be an arborist has to enjoy being outdoors. It’s a great industry with an enjoyable range of career options; it’s exciting and humbling at the same time. If you’re interested in working in the industry, just look up some good arborist companies, and knock on enough doors and you’ll find yourself a job.