Urban Forestry: an introduction by the Treecare team

In October, AGP collaborated with TreeCare to hold an online course on the topic of Urban Forestry. TreeCare is a team of nine tree surgeons (five Aurovilians, two Nepalis, one young man from Kuilapalayam and one German volunteer) that provides professional care for the trees, landscapes and green spaces of homes, businesses and communities, including tree pruning or removal, cabling and bracing, shrub pruning and grass trimming. Led by three ISA certified arborists, the team also offers workshops and training sessions to all those interested in turning this passion into a profession.

When they started their unit, the TreeCare team was aiming for business expansion, but, as Julian said, “we were dreaming of building an empire where there was not even an industry.” They then turned towards education, as the ideology of Tree Care has to spread throughout India to create the foundation for a vibrant industry. “The campaign is not only to provide information, but also warn against misinformation,” Julian added. “It is important to share knowledge about trees and their needs with the clients, but they also need to know about workers’ safety; sometimes the latter do the job without any specialised gear, which is very dangerous.”

The online course was set up in four modules. Using educational material, field-based highlights and case studies in India and abroad, the modules covered a wide range of urban forestry topics. The aim was to equip professionals in the field of urbanism with knowledge about the biology and relevance of urban trees in order to incorporate their health and wellbeing into urban landscaping.

The main topics covered were tree biology, urban forestry, pre-development planning, post-development follow-up and maintenance. During the live Q&A sessions at the end of each module, the arborists gave detailed insight into how to apply these learnings in each of the aforementioned professional fields: which trees to integrate into an upcoming development project or future city infrastructure, how they grow and react in urban environments, how to cater to their needs and prevent unintentional damage in this hostile environment, how to maintain them, etc.

One of the presenters, Anadi, emphasised that arboriculture is only 100 years old and people have learned and discovered more in the last 15-20 years that in the first 50. The learning has been exponential in this field, with regular changes in standards and norms linked to new discoveries and know-how. In Europe, arboriculture has since become the norm: no town planning work starts without the visit and advice of an arborist. The TreeCare team shared that unfortunately, the Indian market has little knowledge about arboriculture: tree care here is done in a very need-based and haphazard way.

Despite many of the participants in the webinar sharing that they were hearing about arboriculture for the first time, the course highlighted that this industry is relevant to all professions in the fields of sustainability, the environment and town planning (town planners, engineers, builders, contractors, landscapers and architects). Yet, “There is no need to become an arborist to understand and integrate urban forestry knowledge into one’s profession,” said Jonas, one of the three TreeCare executives. 

The TreeCare team was impressed that the participants’ questions were very specific and technical, enabling them to delve more deeply into the subject. As Inge of AGP explained, the main difference between previous AGP webinars and the one with TreeCare is that instead of being a one-off, the TreeCare course consists of four progressive modules that constitute an entire course, providing more in-depth knowledge and practical information that people in the field can apply immediately.

At the end of the course, all participants received a Certificate of Completion. About 20 people followed the whole course. Senior AGP member Balu was surprised to see that – for the first time since AGP has started organising webinars – all the people who signed up for TreeCare’s course attended all the modules; this showed they were genuinely inspired, interested and invested in the topic. For Bagirath from TreeCare, it was a new challenge to create something professional and educational, including quality of work and confidence on subject. Since arboriculture is a new science, there was a lot of learning involved in the teaching. Nivetha (AGP) shared that, despite not actually being educators themselves, the TreeCare team set a high standard in terms of how they presented the material, and motivated and interacted with the participants. 

While the AGP team was impressed by TreeCare’s professionalism and pedagogic approach to teaching, as well as touched by their overt passion, TreeCare really appreciated working with AGP as they were a great help with organisation and held the interface needed for an effective sharing of knowledge. Having witnessed the repeated cutting down of trees in her hometown Pondicherry since her childhood, Priya from AGP hopes that the TreeCare team can also raise awareness at the level of municipalities and governments.

The course was held again in November and can be repeated as often as requests keep rolling in!

For more information: http://treecareindia.com/ or 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLCKEJ5EiPk. Also visit https://agpworkshops.com/workshops/auroville-a-journey-of-sustainability/ to learn about the role of Auroville in India and the world’s sustainability agenda.