Q. What does an arboriculturalist at UBC do in terms of keeping our campus green and leafy? How did you get started in this field?
I've been at UBC since 2004. Arboriculturalists at UBC take care of trees, pruning and performing overall arboricultural work. This includes observing trees, maintaining their health and trying to keep them in the form of what that species of trees is supposed to look like.
I started out in gardening and landscaping. While attending a gardening school, I took an arboriculture class and realized that I was more interested in that aspect of the job than the rest.
Q. What inspires you about your work? What do you enjoy about it?
Helping to bring to society a better, healthier place to live, work and study. The best part of my job is probably getting to work outside. Working with trees has enabled me to appreciate nature a lot more.
Q. What role do trees play in our communities?
They help reduce greenhouse gases and can help with physical and mental issues people might have.
They are actually a living thing and we need to treat them with respect.
It's really important to try and protect large trees. Some of these trees took 80 years to reach their size and it's actually really hard to replace them.
Q. What kind of things do you find in the trees?
Bird, birds' nests, wasp nests, squirrels and even raccoons. There are even eagles' nests perched up in the trees along the beach.
Q. Do you have a favorite tree on campus?
That's really hard for me to answer. Trees are so unique and every tree has a unique use in contributing to an area. A couple of examples, however, would be at the corner of University Boulevard and Main Mall - there's some large Elm trees.
Q. What's your favourite blooming tree?
The Cornus, or also knows as Dogwood. In fact, they are starting to bloom right now.