MHS members’ event

With Tony Kirkham MBE, FICFor(Hon), FArborA who is an arboriculturist, plantsman, author and lecturer. He started his career as a forestry apprentice with Tilhill Forestry Nurseries. After a time spent working in Germany, learning about tree management within urban and park environments he moved to Kew to study the Diploma in Horticulture to broaden his knowledge in horticulture.

The only student to be offered a job at Kew upon graduation, he spent the next 14 years managing part of Kew's arboretum. During this time, he completed several plant collecting expeditions in East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, the Russian Far East and Sakhalin Island, China and Japan to add to Kew's collection and replace trees lost in the Great Storm of 1987.

After 43 years, Kirkham retired from the post of Kew's Head of Arboretum, Gardens and Horticultural Services where he and his team managed 14,000 trees and shared their passion for trees with the visitors to Kew. He is the author of several books and ran the "Treeathlon" to support the Trees for Cities campaign for more trees in urban areas in the UK, and says that “looking at trees anywhere in the world” is one of his hobbies.

Kirkham sits on many professional committees including the International Dendrology Society, and sits on committees of the Royal Horticultural Society's Council.

He is a trustee of the Tree Register of Britain and Ireland (TROBI), and a trustee of the Chelsea Physic Garden where he also chairs its Garden Advisory Committee.

In this talk Tony will tell us about his career and also tell some tree stories.

Competition - ?