96 | The royal treatment Tree King is currently doing mainly residential work, much of it with trees found on mid- to high-end properties. Tree King T T Virginia Wright CONTRACTING With five years’ experience under his belt, arborist Luke Cabrol moved to New Zealand from the UK 15 years ago, then seven years ago bought the company name ‘Tree King’, and the phone number, and since then has built up a highly successful business. Tree King’s current team includes Luke, three staff taking care of everything behind the scenes, and 12 arborists, all of whom are climbers. Not all arborists are climbers, as some prefer to stick to ground duties: cutting things up on the ground, lowering things down with ropes, doing the rigging and so on. Having a skilled climber makes for a skillfully executed job, which is why Luke is pleased that all of those working at Tree King have done the three to four years training needed to be fully qualified. Of the 12 arborists currently working for Tree King, 10 have done at least some of their apprenticeship with Luke. “It’s an on-the-job apprenticeship through ITO (Industry Training Organisation), so I train them and assess them at work, and while that’s happening they have book work and go on courses and so on.” Tree King is currently doing mainly residential work, much of it with trees found on mid- to high-end properties, and occasionally working with what Luke calls prestigious trees, often protected, which he and the team really enjoy putting their skills to work on. “We recently worked on some heritage trees in Northcote Point. They were cliff-top pohutukawas, well over 100 years old, we were pruning with no stair access to the beach below, so we used a helicopter to fly out the branches for chipping,” says Luke. It’s the technical side of those jobs that make them interesting, with Tree King being involved in the resource consents needed, as well as the reports required once the job is complete. It’s part and parcel of Luke’s professional approach to his work, which also led to his registration as a Master Arborist. “It’s a scheme which is run by the New Zealand Arboricultural Association, which identifies highly skilled individuals and companies. In our industry, currently, there’s no need to be registered. Anyone can call themselves an arborist, so this is one step in the right direction. It helps bring up quality across the board.” Having multiple qualified teams means that Tree King can get to jobs quickly and execute them professionally. They guarantee all their work and will return to sort out anything a client isn’t happy with, although that’s a rare occurrence, if it happens at all. Good pruning takes tree health into account, along with what the client wants. In a nutshell: “If you wanted more sunlight downstairs in your lounge, I could prune it so that it would look like we hadn’t even touched the tree, but you’d come home to find more sunlight in your lounge,” says Luke. A lot of their work comes through landscape companies such as Humphries Landscape in Morningside, and working with other businesses, whether landscaping, maintenance, property managers or developers, or anyone else who deals with trees, is something they would like to do more of. “We can do a tree report for a development site, or clear a site, or monitor trees as part of resource consent conditions, or we can assess trees and set up maintenance schedules for a body corporate and so on,” explains Luke. They already do tree assessments for schools, working with them to spread costs for a tree- maintenance plan over time to make it easier to budget. 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