Mike A

Steve - thank you for this. Mike

Steve - can you tell me more about this incident at Cambridge, as I am unaware of it. I'm slowly turning the 'management' - would you believe that there was no annual budget for tree maintenance up until now? 500 plus trees, and no one qualified to work on them, and a refusal to spend any money on them - the mindset was, and I quote this "wait for them to fall down, that way we don't have to pay to take them down"... following several near misses, and numerous meetings, I have turned that mentality to the stage where people say "what do we need to do, Mike" - that's stage one done, now we are on to building the infrastructure to allow us to manage a large portion of any tree work in house, with a selection of contractors on standyby should the need arise. Mike

Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that I have inherited, and the state of the playing fields are even worse. Hell of a lot of areas that are in need of much improvement... good job I like a challenge! Mike

one more

and again

and another...

another...

Pics of the last one to come down:

Hello all Regards all things diesel... call it a dim witted groundsman who was based at that site (prep school) as a sole groundsman. It wouldn't be right of me to go into too much detail on a public forum, but I will say that it was carried out last September (the grass shown signs of burning then), and I suspect it was diesel, because he also applied this to the weeds and footpaths around the site - we knew this by the staining all over the place, and the accident that ensued when a resident motorcyclist had a fall... disciplinary procedures had to be enforced, unfortunately. Re qualification in tree care - none at present. I am fairly new to the role of grounds manager (though I have been a groundsman/greenkeeper for about 12 years now), and am currently working through the level 3 diploma in sportsturf. Next year, I am due on a tree surveying course, as well as cs 30/31 - we are also training one of our assistant groundsmen in this area as he has a keen interest in arboriculture. I am also looking into registering for membership with one of the relevant arboricultural bodies, to try to fast track our development in this area. We do have approx 500 trees across both sites (all due to be identified and logged on a database this year), which have been very badly neglected over the years - they really are in a poor state. We removed 12 last winter, and one very large elm came down a few weeks back, falling on a run of garages, causing pretty extensive damage (will see if I can post some pics) Re kids - this was not our students - our terms finished a fortnight ago - the damage was caused over this weekend just gone. Mike

Rob We have been having other issues with vandalism at this site lately, which we are working closely with the police with, to get sorted out, hence why I will be contacting them. We are on the Isle of Man - our ways of dealing with this type of thing differ from the mainland ways.

The damage forms a complete ring around the tree, unfortunately - why people do this type of thing, I will never know. Phone call to the police in the morning. Oh well, I will keep a look out for the signs that you speak of, and have it removed if I have to. I have 7 weeks before term starts, so we have no kids on site until then (or shouldn't have anyway), so that should at least give me a chance to monitor any changes in it's condition before committing to getting the saw out. Thank you all, for all help... much appreciated. Mike

Hi Tom - thanks for your input. I have no pictures of the crown at this time, as I only noticed this late on this afternoon. There is evidence of some sort of vandalism on some of the trees, scratching names etc. Our pupils are on summer holidays (posh school!!), and this seems to have happened over this weekend just gone, so I suspect that some local youth's have been at them. Would you know if there is anything that I can do to help the tree in the last two pics recover from this damage?

Hello all First post here, looking for some advice. I am the grounds manager at two schools - during my routine ground inspections, I find this today (pics attached). I have been concerned about this group of trees in particular for a little while now, as one of my ex employees decided to spray 'something' around the bases of the trees last year - he claimed it was Glyphosate, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it was red diesel. Could anyone identify what the problem is, and advise me as to what possible options I have to restore the health of these trees, if any. Many thanks Mike