Davey Tree Flipbooks

March-April Davey Bulletin 2020

The Davey Tree Expert Company provides residential and commercial tree service and landscape service throughout North America. Read our Flipbooks for helpful tips and information on proper tree and lawn care.

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The Davey Tree Expert Company P.O. Box 5193 Kent, Ohio 44240-5193 FROM THE ARCHIVES Left: The original "indoor forest" at Davey, assembled in 1926. Those pictured include Davey foremen "Ham" Morrison, George Cotton, Wesley Carle, Lee Conway and "Pop" Caldwell. Bob McIver, assistant chief expert, conceived the idea. Right: Students in the original indoor forest. Soon, 100 students filled both floors practicing cavity repair, cabling and bracing and other techniques amidst the indoor forest. McIver's ingenuity had birthed a tradition that continues each winter during the Davey Institute of Tree Sciences. "It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the instruction which has been given the Institute students this winter in this unusual laboratory," the February 1926 Bulletin states. "This special instruction is bound to have a far-reaching effect in improving still further the quality of our service. Bob certainly deserves a lot of credit for his ingenuity in contriving this unique plan of giving thorough practical instruction to the students of the Institute." The idea of training Davey arborists on real trees, indoors, during the bleak winter months is nearly 100 years old. Bob McIver, an instructor in "practical tree surgery" at the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery in 1926, lamented the idea of teaching his classes outside in a freshly fallen 2 feet of snow. For as it is today, Davey's premiere training program was taught during the winter months, and that often brought weather-related challenges. So McIver, being an inventive problem-solver, came up with the idea of building an indoor forest to use for his class instruction. In February 1926, Davey rented the first floor and basement of a building on River Street in Kent, a few doors down from the Institute, and proceeded to erect four rows of trees with a dozen trees to each row. Each tree was fastened rigidly to the floor and linked together by an interlocking system of braces. INDOOR FOREST CONCEPT ORIGINATED IN 1926

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