1 Aug 2024
Some inspiring news from the Green Wood Centre this week! The brilliant Gus from Gus Bishop Tree Services in Stamford Bridge, just outside Leeds, recently attended one of our woodland management courses. He was so impressed by our work to protect and restore small woodlands that he decided to donate 1% of his profits to the organisation!
As a charity, we are reliant on donations to continue this vital work and we would welcome the opportunity to speak to others who may be able to support us. If you'd like to know more, please get in touch with our Development Officer, Julia Allinson: [email protected]
We'd like to say a very heartfelt thank you to Gus for his generosity and enthusiasm, here's a bit more about his life, work, and plans to work more closely with small woodland owners.
I grew up in a small village just south of Sheffield, spending my holidays earning pocket money by doing gardening jobs for friends and neighbours. Over time, this developed into dealing with small trees. When I was sixteen, a family friend, an old forester and tree surgeon, invited me to stay with him in Somerset. I spent a couple of weeks with him and immediately fell in love with tree work.
I initially put my passion aside to pursue a career in micro and molecular biology, but I continued to help family and friends with tree work on weekends. Eventually, the call of the wild became too strong, and I decided to return to my roots and embark on a career in professional tree surgery.
The training to become fully licensed and the steep learning curve once employed full-time was gruelling. The initial pay rates were low, and the working conditions were often tough and dangerous. However, working outside every day with trees in the natural environment, combined with the adrenaline of being 40 feet above the ground and swinging from limb to limb is intensely enjoyable and rewarding. Once over the initial hump, the work became easier and now I wouldn't swap it for any other job in the world.
There is, however, one frustrating aspect of tree work. Every week, I'm asked to remove perfectly healthy, sometimes mature trees for reasons like "it drops leaves on my driveway" or "we don’t get any light in" or "pigeons poo on our garage roof." Most tree surgeons internally shake their heads in sadness when they hear this, but economic realities mean we can't turn down jobs.
As I set up Gus Bishop Tree Services, I'm determined to offset the environmental damage sometimes necessary to survive in this competitive field. That's why we'll be donating 1% of all profits to the Small Woods charity to support wellbeing experiences in woodlands, woodland management, and other small woods projects. I hope this will encourage other tree surgery firms to also offset their environmental footprint.
We're also looking to work closely with woodland owners, as the woodland environment is where we can make a larger-scale difference in aiding biodiversity and the environment.
If you'd like to get in touch, please email: [email protected].
