Not Your Father’s Arboriculture

It signaled an end to the steam century and introduced the Era of Electricity. Color photography was invented and the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight. Robert Peary reached the North Pole and Marconi transmitted messages across the Atlantic. And in the world of trees, two entrepreneurs advanced the science and art of arboriculture and founded companies that still bear their names today. 

Francis A. Bartlett, a young graduate of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, applied his new knowledge and skills to shade tree care and convinced an estate owner in Bedford, New York, to hire him. It was 1907 and the first commercial tree care job performed by what became the F. A. Bartlett Tree Expert Company. Bartlett’s competitor was John Davey, an immigrant from England who had been in practice for nearly 30 years before founding the Davey Tree Expert Company in 1909. 

Both men also opened technical schools in what they termed ‘tree surgery,’ and Davey published a popular book, The Tree Doctor, in 1901. In the revised, hardback version in 1907, he wrote, “This work is sent forth with a fervent prayer for Heaven’s blessing on it, and an appeal to all to help in planting and caring for trees in the country that was once preeminently ‘The Land of Forests.’” 

Bartlett and Davey were pioneers in arboriculture. They would be amazed and pleased at the state of individual tree care today and the collective practice we call urban forestry. 

In this bulletin, we highlight a few of the changes that are helping inspired communities to do a better job of planting and caring for their trees.