George Trott of G Trott Tree Consultancy has recently launched My Tree Diary, an online app software for professionals and the general public to record, share and track their favourite trees.
In a Q&A with the team, the arborist discusses how the software can help professionals, his future intentions and creating a new community within it.
George Trott
What is the concept of My Tree Diary?
“The overarching concept is to give everyone the ability to highlight and record trees that are special to them so that everyone else can visit and appreciate them, too.
“There’s all these other small things; one of them being is that I think a lot of people’s experience or exposure to trees is very limited. It’s often just a small tree that they might walk past on the way to work every day, or one in their office courtyard they sit under at lunch and they don’t really think about it. We can try and boost the publicity of such trees.”
How was the idea of this software developed?
“I made the Right Tree, Right Place web tool which then got a bug. I wanted to make something else, and came across a tree I didn’t realise was even in the area. The idea came from realising that if someone knows something really cool, they can map it and make it available to everyone else. Then I had the idea for My Tree Diary, which was around two months ago.”
How can this also be used by the general public to create a community?
“The software is creating a community of people that are highlighting things essential to them. Then behind all that, there’s a bit of a social science side to it.
“Lots of people have trees that mean different things to different people, and it’s very hard to put a real value on a tree, like creating a planning scenario. For example, the planning developments used are pretty good, but they miss out a lot of things because arguably, what is special about a tree to a person? It’s quite hard to work that out.
“So the other thing behind it is this: When you put a tree on My Tree Diary, you’re saying why that tree is special to you. We can collate all that data about these different trees and understand why they are special to people.”
How can professionals utilise My Tree Diary?
“Local authorities could look into an area and understand which trees are special to people, which can be a useful tool when developing an area.
“Also, I’m going to push with a few places locally and beyond, not necessarily consultants, but toward someone that works on an estate, like a national trust property, or a space with public gardens with particularly interesting trees.
“That company or that property itself can register the trees on My Tree Diary to then highlight to their visitors. They can direct visitors to the map with all these special trees, alongside information about each one.
“It can be expanded into this sort of business tool as well.”
How would you encourage someone to sign up to My Tree Diary?
“The best way to start would be to use the free membership. Get your head around it, because I think for some people it will just click instantly and you’ll look at it and go, ‘yeah, that’s really cool. I see the idea. I see the aim of it, and I want to contribute to that.’
“Honestly, just get your head around it by playing around with it and start looking at stuff already on there.”
What is the end goal with this software?
“Eventually, if we can get enough people on there and enough trees dotted around; it will have a feature to create tree walks and share those routes with people.
“If we can get enough people as well, and we’ve got a big enough community, I’d like to host in person events.
“I want to grow this massive community of people and everything that can come with it.”
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