I know there are trees standing today that I've helped to save
"I know there are trees standing today that I've helped to save."Back at the rabbi's place, it's hard to hear yourself think. Most of Dick's gang of workers are bustling about in the garden, ear defenders in place against the throbbing of the chainsaw and the head-splitting whine of the timber shredder. "I feel very passionately about trees myself and I'm not afraid of putting my head on the block for them," he tells me. "Fire damage," he says, pointing to brown foliage on a tall conifer. People light their bonfires close up to trees and the heat scorches them all the way up Six months later they can't think why the trees are dying He makes a note.
A sporting punch bag hangs from a rope cutting deep into one of its branches "Ropes and ties act like a tourniquet. People forget that trees have to grow."Surrounding us is a scene of theatrical opulence. The garden is filled with white stone urns, miles of new stone balustrading, fountains, canals and temples - the Alhambra meets the Taj Mahal with some classical cherubs thrown in for good measure. While I marvel at the price tags still stuck to the stonework, Dick sucks his teeth at the price paid for all this instant landscaping by the garden's established trees. A maid instructs us in broken English to go round the back."This is typical of what we find in gardens," announces Dick, patting the trunk of a silver maple near the house. Dick prods the security phone button and the electronic gates purr open. We walk across a wide expanse of freshly-laid paving ("that's destroyed the roots of most of the big trees in the front") and ring the bell.
The door opens a few inches to allow a glimpse of marble floors and dazzling chandeliers. A prospective client wants a health check on the trees in his brand new garden. Vast stuccoed sub-classical houses flash by, gleaming in their icing sugar newness We stop outside an imposing white mansion. I assured him it wouldn't, so he said, `Well, we don't like it anyway, it's too big and it drops leaves everywhere in the autumn.'" Dick says he has wept tears of frustration at the mindless vandalism of some tree haters.We are bowling along through the leafy suburbs of Enfield by now, passing plush golf courses and streets full of well-kept, well-behaved trees. There was the college official who wanted Dick to cut down an ancient and magnificent tree of heaven which graced the unversity's main square. "There was nothing wrong with the tree or its site but he kept saying it would fall down or block the drains, or cause subsidence of the buildings.
"When we started to cut it down she started screaming at us and pelting us with bricks. In the end, the police had to come and arrest her."On the other side of the fence are the people who view trees with irrational fear and loathing. "When we turned up, this little old lady was standing under the tree trying to protect it and shaking her umbrella at us," recalls Dick. The behaviour of the rabbi's tree-loving neighbours is mild, it seems, compared with the passions stirred up in many people he has met.
One client who was forced to call him in to fell a dead and dangerous tree in his garden lived next door to an elderly couple who were violently opposed to the idea. He has a little time now to reflect on the strange relationship between people and trees. It's time to be somewhere else.The next job is a semi-rural garden at the end of the motorway. Dick's Highgate Hill headquarters serves clients from central London to the suburbs and commuter villages beyond. They make "OK" gestures at Dick as their chainsaws begin to blast the air. This garden is so small that any sawn-up branches which drop are targeted squarely at our heads.
