John Davey started a company well over one hundred years ago that remains one of the largest arboriculture contractors in the world. But more than that, he branded what we know today as the arborist, even more, tree care. His book, The Tree Doctor, published in 1901, was, on the surface, an affordable blueprint for tree owners and practicing arborists on proper arboriculture. But, the book is also a culmination of John Davey’s life work, in simple language, his passion for trees and his magnificent formulation of a systematic process of tree care that focuses on tree physiology. The truth is, for more than a hundred years, we’ve been saying what John Davey was saying, trying to fill the shoes of the original Tree Doctor, and also trying to recreate the image of him in ourselves, whether we know it or not.

Imagine with me a post-antebellum America. Top hats and bowties, a time when politicians spoke in public squares from the back of horse-drawn carriages and the photos are all sepia in tone. If judging this time simply from those photos, you’d think no one every smiled. On the contrary, tt was a period of hard work, jovial spirits, industrial revolution. It was a time when Republican had a different meaning, when doctors made house calls, and when arboriculture was given to the masses.

In fact, if Henry Ford was the genius behind mass-producing automobiles,  it was John Davey who was the genius behind mass-producing arboriculture.

I think, even though Davey was passionate about sharing his knowledge and love of trees in his book, he was even more focused on suffocating his competition at the time, denouncing improper care of trees by ‘Tree Butchers”, a term he repeats on virtually every other page of his book, it seems. This is important, because it may be the first time in history that we see a professional arborist differentiating themselves from the competition. This branding will come to be the focus of tree care operation sales tactics throughout the next century and beyond.

See if this sounds familiar, “Nature does not form those beautiful and health-giving tops of shade trees to be but to pieces to furnish ‘beer money’ for a lot of Tree Fools,” (Davey, The Tree Doctor). I’ve certainly tried to distinguish myself from the competition on sales calls the same way, using almost the exact same words. Davey certainly understood the frustration of a competitive market where other contractors where less educated, less passionate and certainly less deserving of that living canvas.

In another instance in The Tree Doctor Davey is talking about a stand of trees that were improperly pruned by the telephone company, saying that “Photo 40 shows you how they slaughtered one of the most symmetrical maples that could be found elsewhere. Photo 39 reveals their fiendish work on two grand oaks. Whether such fellows should be put into the ‘pen’, hanged, shot or drowned, or all of it, is difficult to say,” (Davey, 18).

Jill Jonnes has a chapter in her book Urban Forests, A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape partially dedicated to John Davey. To illustrate the personal importance of Davey’s book, Jonnes writes, “when Davey discovered that no publisher was willing to bring forth this long-aborning labor, he boldly borrowed $7,000 (the equivalent of $280,000 today) and had the book with its red linen cover published in 1901,” (Jonnes, 42). It is described by Jonnes at one point as a seminole publication, and rightly so.

It was important that Davey’s book reached every tree owner in America, and he priced it accordingly, writing in the introduction that, “I desire to keep the book at $1.00, so that it will be within the reach of all,” (Davey, The Tree Doctor).

Davey was highly sought out by some of the most illustrious property and tree owners of his time. Self branded now as a doctor of sorts, educated and a gentleman beyond all else, who wouldn’t want John Davey caring for their trees?

“In one case John Davey was called in to save a rich man’s great elm that was ‘rather sad looking. It seemed to be dying from root to crest…but only on one side.’ The Tree Doctor diagnosed the trouble: ‘thick sod on one side that prevented natural nutrients and moisture from reaching the roots.’ He returned with his crew and forty feet from the trunk dug a semicircular trench through the sod, and worked in ‘several wagon loads of manure into the soil.’ When spring came round the following year, ‘the tree was beautiful and green on all sides,’ and John Davey had another customer for life,” (Jonnes, 43). Davey knew how to get to the root of the problem, nor was he scared of a dirty hand.

John Davey was a colorful character indeed, and enjoyed educating people in tree care, as well as giving demonstrations too. Jonnes writes of Davey on his managing of the neglected Standing Rock Cemetery in Kent, Ohio, “Davey could often be found suspended from ropes high up in the branches, pruning deadwood or applying special salves. His skillful ministrations rejuvenated the neglected mature trees in this overgrown burial ground, and the public flocked to enjoy the now-lovely memorial park. Sought out as the local ‘tree-man,’ Davey also opened his own nursery business. He discovered a taste for writing pamphlets and lecturing on subjects as disparate as the need for women’s suffrage and the stars and planets, but above all the beauty and importance of birds and trees to humankind and the interdependence of man and nature,” (Jonnes, 41). Davey knew no bounds..

Sure, many things have changed scientifically in the way that we understand trees in a modern context. Research has evolved and advanced. Equipment has been modernized. The field of Bio-mechanics especially, and that magical acronym CODIT that Mr. Shigo gave us were areas that John Davey didn’t venture so much, but he was absolutely scratching the surface nonetheless.

John Davey was methodical and obsessive, and extraordinarily observant. He loved his trees and he loved his people. Jonnes reveals something his father told him at a very young age while planting potatoes in the field: “Do it right or not at all” (40). And so this stuck with Davey his entire career. It was the basis of his craft in arboriculture, and it is certainly still a central concept that drives arboriculture into the future.

Most importantly, then and now, John Davey shows us that it’s not just what we do, or what we know, but what’s in our heart, that guides us as arborists, as tree doctors; lovers of the natural world and a shady place to rest.