Greg Packman has become the go-to authority on ground-based inspections for Massaria in London plane, courtesy of the 50,000 inspections he has made to date. Here, he meets up with Carolyne Locher in the London Borough of Islington to explore A Day in the Working Life, one of an occasional series of features looking at roles within the industry.
GREG Packman, senior tree inspector for the London Borough of Islington, is outside Highbury & Islington’s Underground/Overground station exit, scrolling through his Twitter feed. Updates from Mick Crawley (emeritus professor of plant ecology at Imperial College) and Des McKenzie are among those he follows. Although on holiday this week, he has travelled in especially to meet.
Visitors orient themselves using the locality map. Landmarks such as Emirates Stadium, Union Chapel, Islington Town Hall, the Business Design Centre and the restaurants and bars of Upper Street are all within 15 minutes’ walking distance. St Mary Magdalene Church and Gardens are five minutes away and Highbury Fields, at 11.75 ha the borough’s largest open green space, is just beyond Highbury Corner, a minute’s walk at most.
Islington, the second smallest of London’s 32 boroughs, is represented by two constituencies (including Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North). The Labour-run local authority administers the borough’s 16 wards, stretching from Archway south to Clerkenwell. With the highest population per square kilometre and the lowest ratio of open space to built-up areas (mostly built on London clay) of any of the capital’s boroughs, it is possible that the 707 individuals identifying (religion-wise) as Jedi Knight (Census 2011) may travel far, far beyond Islington’s borders to find a quiet corner of the universe in which to safely practise lightsaber training.
When it comes to trees, Islington’s 25 per cent canopy cover is 4 per cent higher than the London average, courtesy of approximately 40,000 privately and publicly owned specimens. The council’s duty of care and health and safety policy extends to the inspection and management of approximately 34,000 trees, growing along highways, throughout council-owned social housing developments and schools, within parks, pocket parks, churchyards and other green spaces.
Greg has worked for Islington’s Public Realm Department, alongside seven Tree Team colleagues, for eight months. He is not involved in planning (developments and TPOs), subsidence (insurance claims inspections), or resident enquiries (including complaints).
“I seem to have the best role in council arboriculture, getting the benefit of doing local authority works and external consultancy work: two different experiences in one job.”
Explaining the duality, Greg says: “Following the first wave of local authority budget cuts [under the 2010 Conservative government], the department lost a proportion of their budget.” Unable to function without this, the department was given permission to earn back the shortfall, “by tendering for and winning three-year inspection contracts with other local authorities, charities and other organisations; in effect, hiring out their expertise. My role is almost self-funding, covering costs and contributing to public realm projects in green spaces, helping Islington to become a more liveable place.”
Based in offices on Caledonian Road, Greg spends a quarter of his time surveying trees within the borough, five or six wards a year, on a three-year rotation. Tree stock includes Victorian plantings of horse chestnut, lime and London plane, oddities such as Caucasian wingnut and Raywood ash, which are, “wonderful in autumn, but a nightmare to manage in an urban environment because of their weak branch unions. They are amongst the most common reason for public call-outs.”
A tree inspector’s key skill is tree knowledge. What this actually means is knowing what a healthy tree should look like, the species-specific characteristics, being able to identify hazards and defects, having a risk assessment method to work out the management needed and knowing what the implications of that management will be.
Surveys of Highbury West ward begin in late-March, taking an estimated week and a half to complete.
“It is an enjoyable area. Sometimes I go with colleagues, other times alone, inspecting highways – (predominantly) street trees – and those in public realm parks. I may assist colleagues on large or difficult sites, or when they work within Islington’s housing association sites and for arm’s length housing organisations such as Partners for Islington, if and when they require assistance or professional advice.”
Greg uses a Samsung Galaxy tablet (connected to a bespoke database of council-maintained trees containing information on each individual tree), a nylon-faced mallet and steel probe during his inspections. “I go around hitting trees with a plastic hammer. A sharp sound indicates that a tree is healthy. A hollow resonant sound means decay has set in. If you can push in the probe, that part of the tree has decay.”
On highways, in addition to assessing tree health and updating the tree inventory data for accurate analysis, Greg will be looking to prune foliage and branches away from pedestrian access, lampposts, CCTV cameras, signs and properties. “Where there is basal decay, we may prune to reduce the canopy size, although there is conflicting opinion on how effective reductions are for tree safety.”
Islington maintains a three-year inspection cycle for all their trees. They maintain a two- to three-year pollard cycle (back to previous reduction points) for street trees that have been implicated in subsidence claims, actively demonstrating reasonable measures to prevent such property-based issues. “It is working in that middle ground between what is theoretically good and what is defensible. That middle point is about the art of compromise. For me that is what urban arboriculture is all about.”
However, “Under the expectations of duty of care, if a private tree looks particularly unsafe, Section 154 of the Highways Act can be used to compel an owner to act, in some cases removing a tree. Last year, I saw a horse chestnut leaning towards the road. It had eight large Ganoderma brackets (fungal fruiting bodies) and attempts at pollarding had been made. If the tree had fallen, it would have blocked the entire road and crushed a couple of cars.”
Greg, 30, is good company and well-read, courtesy of the Royal Parks ‘library’ and his 20 hours of commuting time each week. At sixth-form college in Bedfordshire, he had dreams of playing bass guitar in a tribute band called Greg Zeppelin. He studied history at university, volunteering during the holidays as a park ranger at Harrold-Odell Country Park. Enjoying the outdoors, he transferred to a foundation degree in arboriculture at Moulton College (Northamptonshire).
After graduating in 2013, he ran a gardening business and continued volunteering. “My gardening career was about earning enough to buy new kit and take on bigger jobs. If I needed a new skill, I hired myself out and watched how things were done, practised until I could do it myself, then took the relevant certification. I knew I did not want to be self-employed in the long-term.”
Joining the Royal Parks in 2015, in a Massaria-specific arb assistant role, he says: “The Royal Parks have 77 million visitors annually. I spent February to September surveying 2,500 London plane trees for Massaria, with winter surveys and general tree officer work at other times. To begin with, one tree inspection could take up to 10 minutes. I became an expert in ground-based inspections and can now confidently inspect an entire tree in 90 seconds or less.”
Before joining Islington, he knew that the team had a good reputation. The role he applied for offered opportunities to learn new skill sets. “From Royal Parks, Islington was like stepping into a different world. Working in a dense urban setting, it is challenging to protect trees when other council-led priorities (planning for a new cycle route or an urban development) are in play.”
Using new database software (ezytreev) and understanding a new tree management policy was relatively easy. More challenging was the process for doing things. “We have to run a service request to do anything. It is as much about knowing which department, highways, public health, recycling (or other), as it is which of 5,000 council employees to approach. It took time to get used to.”
Greg spends three quarters of his time outside the borough. In Alexandra Palace Park (LB Haringey), London planes surrounding the zip wires, lakes and putting greens are inspected every year. Then he’s down to English Heritage Grade II-listed Middle Temple Gardens and the 3.5-acre Inner Temple Gardens, the City of London’s largest green space, inspecting walnut, medlar, quince and blackberry trees as well as London planes.
“My role project managing tree management for external clients offers less security. We inspect for the life of a three-year contract, then we have to re-tender. While we manage ecology and risks, we also have to manage the landscape. I am perhaps more tolerant of what I leave in a tree, issuing works as a last resort. Alexandra Park and Epping Forest seem to like this, wanting to retain as much as possible.”
Greg spent from November to February in Epping Forest (managed by the Corporation of London), surveying 180 km of highways, verge and rear garden fences. “It is a significant project for us. In the last hundred years, forest lands have been lost to development but the Corporation of London still owns many bits of land. All areas are zoned and we inspect everything within a 30-metre falling distance of all highways and properties.”
He practises negative surveying for the Epping Forest survey. “If we see defects, hazardous deadwood, vehicle wounds, a shaded-out and weak birch tree that may fall over, fungal fruiting bodies and decay at the base, or broken branches following recent storms, we inspect thoroughly and may then issue work specifications. Trees with no visible defects are left alone. About one in every 1,000 trees requires a reduction, deadwood work or removal. Following two years of summer droughts, sooty bark disease (fungal pathogen) has re-emerged affecting hundreds of young sycamore. Epping has a million trees, give or take, so the loss is not too much.”
Managing surveys, making inspections, organising subcontractors to work with (lone working on highways or in remote locations is not allowed) and delivering the work in good time is an achievement and something Greg would like to continue to build on.
We go for a wander, passing private magnolias and public pillar crab apples. By a public Himalayan birch, Greg says: “In 2018, I was one of Pro-Landscaper’s 30 Under 30 Award winners,” for the work put into his career. He gives a lot back, leading walks (now as a volunteer) through the Royal Parks and Brompton Cemetery. He is involved with the Friends of Alexandra Park, National Park City and the London Urban Tree Festival. “Community engagement gives me a platform to explain why what we do is important. I find that when I take time to explain what my job is and how we manage these trees when contentious decisions come up, the public are much more understanding.”
At the National Tree Officers Conference in 2017, he spoke to 240 delegates on the validity of ground-based inspections as a starting point for the detection of Massaria. “At some point, every mature plane tree in London will have Massaria branches: a branch that is dying off, accelerated by a fungus.” His PowerPoint presentation was subsequently downloaded and used as an inspection guide by attendees. As chair of the LTOA Massaria Working Group, he is updating guidance, creating an inspection process and a risk management document. In April, he was scheduled to speak at Deutsche Baumpflegetage (German Tree Care Conference) and in May he was due in Spain. Both events were cancelled due to COVID-19.
Recrossing the Holloway Road and approaching St Mary Magdalene Church, Greg reveals that the most valuable amenity tree in the UK, according to the CAVAT (Capital Asset Value of Amenity Trees) Register, grows in the church’s garden. Worth an estimated £1.5 million, we consider the London plane’s age, girth and how much carbon it may lock up.
In spring 2019, Islington Council was one of the first to declare a climate emergency. “The government’s tree planting figures are a nice political strapline, but they push local authorities to deliver on infrastructure and housing targets rather than mitigating for climate change. Blanket targets are not the answer. Emissions reduction is, and trees are part of that. The London Environment Strategy sets to increase canopy cover targets by 10 per cent by 2050, with budgets for planting and management available from the GLA.
“Islington is almost out of space for planting street trees. We have to make sure the trees we have last as long as possible. Following drought years, we keep an eye out for trees that have died and during inspections we do look out for extra space to plant [our 400 trees a year]. We are diversifying street trees, planting with magnolias and Hippophae salicifolia (willow-leaved sea buckthorn) [among others].”
Greg has a motto, ‘familiarity breeds complacency’ to describe how the public see (or don’t see) trees in their landscape (unless they are threatened). He is on a mission to engage with yet more people, through community talks, walks and presentations, increasing their awareness and appreciation of urban trees.
Like the number of London buses queued at Highbury Corner, this is Greg’s third interview this month. What does he like most about being a tree inspector?
“I like the challenge of managing trees in urban areas, managing the different issues and championing the trees. As more people move to the cities, it is about making those cities more liveable areas. Tree and green infrastructure are a big part of that.”
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