You’ve seen it – improper pruning, unforgiving topping, suffocating mulch volcanoes; it’s 2025, like, why do we still see mulch volcanoes? And if you talk to enough property owners, you may hear mountains of tree myths and misconceptions. What’s an arborist to do? In this article, we’ll climb into another facet of tree care: urban-forestry education.

The author reviews the benefits of air excavation at a community urban-
forestry event. “I just show the tool to bring awareness to tree owners, like a show-and-tell. I do educate them on what an arborist would need (for PPE) to operate it safely and professionally,” says Morrow. All photos courtesy of Edward Morrow.

You’ll learn the power of developing engaging community programs to impact and inspire tree owners, helping them learn more about, and how to better care for, their trees.

Serving as a community educator not only elevates your role as a tree care professional, it also can improve the knowledge base of the people you serve. When you teach and help others grow, you grow. Teaching also reinforces what you learn from your professional mentors and peers within the tree care industry. You also get real-time questions that sharpen your tree care acumen, thus helping you tailor more impactful educational programming down the road.

Here’s how it started for me.

A new climb
It appeared to be just another ordinary referral from one arborist to another. I double-checked the address. Total drive time: a little shy of two hours, if traffic behaved. The location was outside my core service area, but after speaking with the property owner, I knew she was serious about tree care, which is a breath of fresh air for any arborist. Also, the Board Certified Master Arborist who highly recommended me was a good friend.

I approached the engagement like any other, hitting the road before the sun rose. The early-morning, gray-skied Saturday assessment soon converted into a crown-cleaning and reduction-pruning exercise for a sprinkling of trees within a backyard forest/nature trail.

With targets galore, an exhibition of aerial acrobatics wouldn’t be enough. It took the coordinated efforts of two other tree care teams to accomplish the task of restricted-access, close-quartered production. The client, intrigued by orchestrated rigging without the aid of bucket trucks and spurs to ascend, expressed that I literally “walked on the air.”

My team’s planned process, willingness to share our approach with enthusiasm and promotion of tree-preservation
strategies prompted the client – a board member for an environmental-education nonprofit – to connect me to another individual who “cared for the forest.” I later received a call from Kathryn Kolb, master naturalist and executive director of Eco-Addendum.

A new technique
Eco-Addendum, or Eco-A, curates year-round nature walks throughout the Southeast, bringing public awareness to the importance of community green spaces and urban forests. On Eco-A walks, Kolb weaves participants through old-growth forests as she explains patterns in the forest and reads ecosystems like a book. Eco-A also spearheads eco-restoration initiatives and volunteer work sessions, which you can learn more about at ecoaddendum.org.

Eco-A invited me to serve as a guest arborist for a summer walk at Adams Park in Atlanta, Georgia. It was good – good because the audience wanted to learn about trees. Their questions ranged from how to tell if a tree is about to fall to proper pruning and even mulching. The walk allowed me to see the concerns of property owners within the small-group setting.

It reminded me of a tree-assessment session, but instead of speaking to one or two people at a time – who usually see tree care and risk mitigation as removal, removal, removal and only that – this wasn’t the same. This was a group of 10 to 15 individuals interested in preserving trees and open to the various strategies arborists employ to do such work.

This experience led me to developing a program to reduce the fear of trees for property owners and shatter tree myths one neighborhood at a time. Here are five keys to helping you do the same.

This image the author used for the cover of his book, “Haven,” was recreated from a photo he’d taken of the Atlanta, Georgia, skyline. “Because it shows the magnitude of the city and why it is known as ‘a city in a forest,’ with so much natural charm. Atlanta was also where urban-forestry programming started for me.”

Conquer
I have a belief that arboriculture is a noble professional, and that arborists are superstars or superheroes in their own right. If you are a professional in your craft, you are beyond what society pictures as a “tree person.”

Destroy your clients’ fears by helping them see the true value of trees. Make it fun. You don’t have to be a standup comic, but being able to make others feel welcomed and showing that you care is infinitely more powerful than the amount of tree knowledge you possess. Let go of your ego and do all in your power to help them understand the not-so-common world of trees. How you feel is how they feel. Bring genuine enthusiasm and joy of what you do, and your audience will reciprocate with smiles, laughter and questions.

They will treasure the fact that they invested the time in learning about trees. With stories, logic and experience, you can help attendees find ease with their tree issue, which may not be big at all but may appear scary to them, because trees can be such an unknown.

Commit
Most people are unaware of the neat tools and gadgets arborists use to access, maintain and protect trees. Share tools that can empower them. They may never use a soil-decompaction tool, but by pulling one out and bringing it to their attention, you can equip them with newfound knowledge to help them save on tree care costs or keep their trees intact. You are helping them become a smarter tree owner.

Drawing upon frameworks like TRAQ and industry education from TCIA, ISA and ASCA can serve you well in breaking down advanced concepts on a nonarborist level. Instead of dry, jargon-filled technobabble, use crisp analogies and embed your outdoor talks with word pictures that help property owners and community members finally “get” tree care.

Conserve
Expand your audience’s understanding of tree care by sharing the different prescriptions. It’s all about awareness. If a tree does pose a threat to people and property, the proper risk-mitigation strategies can be considered.

Often, community members immediately think that removing a tree is the answer to reducing risk. Instead of that being the first option in their minds, you can help them consider that as a final or later option; maybe they can just relocate or restrict access to the target, prune, treat the tree or employ support systems. This helps attendees consider the full scope of potential retention strategies, and also helps them see the depth of arboriculture.

Of course, educate them on the signs and circumstances when tree removal is necessary.

Master Naturalist Kathryn Kolb and ISA Certified Arborist Edward Morrow presented “Living With Trees” at the 100th Annual ISA Conference in Atlanta, Ga., in August 2024. This opportunity allowed them to share how they curate educational tree walks with neighborhoods and communities.

Connect
Once your audience gains a heightened awareness of trees, they may need help. You can create a list of reputable vendors in their area. Your list can be a combination of practicing and consulting arborists. Next, you can segment your list by the specialty of each arborist – because we can all have different superpowers, right?

For example, some consulting arborists may have a Resistograph, some may not. Some production arborists may administer plant health care, while others may only provide pruning and removal services. You also can share municipal-
arborist or arborist-division contacts to help them connect with the right parties for ordinance-related questions.

Create
You can develop simple worksheets and informational documents to reinforce learning. These documents also can list the important contacts we discussed in the Connect section. You can reference recommended books and literature, because you ultimately want to empower tree owners and community members.

On a personal note – and what may appear archaic to most – I enjoy working with illustrators and graphic designers, as they bring tree care to life, giving it an animated feel. I then use Canva to create concise, punchy PDFs that are supplied to attendees. Whatever you can do to bring people into the world of trees in an engaging way, go for it.

As far as your mind goes
Your arborist career can take many paths. While I enjoy enhancing trees and even improving tree care businesses, I’ve always been an educator in some shape or form. Serving as an accountant for more than a decade, I found myself constructing creative ways to make “the language of business” digestible for nonaccountants. Whether it was color-coding accounts to highlight key areas on financial statements, using analogies to increase clarity or drawing simple images, this framework converted well into my role as an urban-forestry educator.

When I look back, it was all training to cultivate my teaching skills and help community members and property owners understand their greatest assets: trees.

Just like climbing, the key is proper positioning and leverage. Choose the right tie-in point and use the right tools and frameworks to unleash a community urban-forestry program destined to create raving tree fans in your neck of the woods.

Not only can this jumpstart your tree care service, but you’ll be sure to find more fulfillment in your career. You can share your expertise and knowledge not only with neighborhood associations, but also tree boards, beautification organizations, extension programs, universities – whatever and wherever your heart and mind desires. As my wood-turning mentor puts it, “As far as your mind goes, that’s what you can make.”

Edward Morrow combines his experiences as an arborist, accountant and author to help industry professionals elevate. He hosted “The Financial Playbook for Tree Care Professionals” and served as a financial peer-group facilitator during TCI EXPO ’24 in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the creator of “Tree S.T.A.R.S.,” an outdoor-adventure book series on a mission to inspire the next generation of arborists.