There are many ways in which Bangkok could be made greener. The policy of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, for example, has long favoured the annual procurement and planting of small trees around the city.
Taradon Tunduan at his home.
Real estate companies are likely to opt for the shortcut of buying mature trees and planting them in the grounds of their properties. Radical greenies, meanwhile, launch fierce campaigns against the cutting down of existing trees.
For 68-year-old tree surgeon Taradon Tunduan, however, the solution lies in sowing the seeds of manpower to take care of the capital's trees.
"Instead of planting more trees, I place emphasis on creating more people who know how to take care of trees," said Taradon, who is known as Kru Tor among his students and clients. Taradon is also known as the "Tree Surgeon", as he has been performing tree surgery for more than 20 years.
Another name for a tree surgeon is an arborist, which refers to someone whose job is concerned with the cultivation, management and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines and other perennial woody plants. Finding a fully qualified arborist is extremely difficult in Thailand, with only a few upmarket gardens, such as the Royal Palace, having in-house arborists.
This is not necessarily because the country lacks knowledge in arboricultural education, but rather because most tree experts in Thailand come from Kasetsart University's Faculty of Forestry, where the emphasis is on forests and not urban trees.
Taradon also studied at Kasetsart University's Faculty of Forestry. After graduation, he worked at the national Housing Authority's division of gardening, before moving to join a private company that ran a coffee farm and chemical fertiliser plant. The financial crisis in 1997 forced him out of the job, so, distraught, Taradon turned to what he enjoyed most in life: taking care of trees.
"There are a lot of big trees in people's gardens and only a few people knowledgeable enough to take care of them properly." An indication of this, Taradon explains, is that quite often Thais confuse the duties of an arborist with a gardener.
"Gardeners and staff of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority of Thailand [MEA] are not arborists. They cut trees, but they cannot keep those trees in natural form. A tree is not an object. It has its taper, line and texture of leaves, barks and roots. Tree surgeons must know how to properly trim to preserve the original taper or even make them look prettier and healthier," he said.
When Taradon first started his tree surgery company 20 years ago, he would regularly walk all around Sukhumvit distributing pamphlets to private houses. He remembers it took a while to establish his name and before clients started calling him.
Nowadays though, Taradon has quite an impressive portfolio of clients, including Vajiravudh College and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as well as many aristocratic families throughout the city. He also provides consultation services for a number of real estate developers that manage high-profile properties, hotels and housing estates. Taradon's schedule is now so busy, new clients have to wait as long as two months for an appointment.
Taradon is therefore currently looking to hire more tree surgeons to help share the load and he spends much of his time as a mentor in a recently-launched project called Urban Tree Care School. Its first course ended in June and the next will start in October.
The project is the joint effort of Bigtrees Group, a civic organisation set up to protect urban trees and the Faculty of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University. It aims to share knowledge and create sufficient manpower to take care of trees.
"At my age," said Taradon, "it is no longer my focus to expand my business. It is time to nurture talents to work as tree surgeons."
Bangkok has long had a problem with tree conservation and the numbers of trees is woefully low, especially compared to places like Singapore, which has a huge and enviable urban canopy that is well nurtured and continually enhanced.
For the last few decades, many of Bangkok's trees have been cut down to accommodate road expansion and construction of new condominiums, shopping malls and other development projects.
Despite this, Taradon still has high hopes for Bangkok and believes that the city's landscape will become greener in the next decade. His hope is founded in the rising interest of real estate developers to preserve trees in their own properties. Many major real estate companies, for example, are realising that well-maintained old trees can add up to 30% more value to a project.
For the first time in Bangkok, Taradon believes, trees in urban areas are being measured for their economic value, which can only be good for the urban tree conservation movement.
"The trend is clear. There is research that clearly shows that consumers spend longer amounts of time in shopping centres that have trees in the grounds than those that don't," Taradon said.
While many might scoff at the trend of preserving old trees in real estate developments as mere window dressing or a fad, Taradon believes that urban tree conservation will have a positive knock-on effect.
"Do you remember the popularity of mobile phones in Thailand started with rich people? At that time, only wealthy consumers could splurge 20,000-30,000 baht for a phone. But that initial popularity changed the industry and lead to consumption at the grassroots market.
"Urban tree conservation will repeat that model. The popularity in real estate developments and shopping malls will establish the trend at the upper level and gradually the need of big trees will form part of the collective must-have and tree conservation will become a way of life in urban areas," Taradon said. It is for this reason that Taradon is currently focused on nurturing new tree surgeons to meet, what he hopes will become, a growing demand.
"While it's important to plant new trees, it is equally as essential to create more tree surgeons to take good care of the existing trees in the city."
Get to the root of the solution
Those who are interested in taking care of urban trees or wish to become professional tree surgeons can attend the second workshop of the Urban Tree Care School from Oct 20 to Nov 1, at Somdet Chaopraya Institute of Psychiatry in Thon Buri. The workshop will take up to 20 students, and the fee is 5,000 baht.
The workshop will be run by various instructors including Taradon "Kru Tor" Tunduan and other landscape architects and conservationists.
The second workshop will be more hands-on than the previous and students will receive certificates at the completion of the course. Participants must be physically fit, able to climb trees and must not be afraid of heights.
Call Dennaphan Chompoo at the Department of Landscape Architecture at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Architecture on 02-218-4339, 086-994-1839, or email thaiurbantrees@gmail.com
