Bianca the Arborist
If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d be climbing giant trees for a living, with a head full of wonder, I probably would’ve hugged you because you’d have single-handedly given me the solution to a life well-lived. But back then, I didn’t even know what an arborist was! I’m a product of private girls’ school education in the 80s and 90s, and as you can probably imagine, the only thing we were meant to climb was the higher echelons of society. We were supposed to go out and rule the world, jousting our way through it in giant, shoulder-padded power suits.
In that sense, I have most definitely entirely failed but from my own personal viewing tower, becoming an arborist in my 40s and starting my own company, Girl in a Tree, has been the very thing that’s salvaged me. It’s been simultaneously the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and also the most rewarding.
From Molecules to Massive Trees
I began my career as a molecular biologist (virology) put simply, the study of very tiny molecules that you need a microscope to see. I was part of a university research group developing vaccines for all sorts of things: rabies, dengue, HIV, and more. I enjoyed science. I liked understanding how things work. But quite frankly, watching a plastic bag blow around a desert would have been more fun.
The reality of lab life was dull painfully so. You remove a molecule from living tissue, manipulate it with other molecules and coax it into giving you a result. Then you do it again. And again. And again.
The problem is: molecules aren’t systems. They don’t live in isolation. And for me, the most meaningful science doesn’t happen under a lens it happens in context, in ecosystems, in living interactions. What I was really craving (though I didn’t know it yet) was a way to observe how things truly work in nature, with no agenda no funding applications, no peer-reviewed papers.
After sticking my head into enough petri dishes whether it was the chemical fumes or just a sense of imminent insanity I pivoted into sports science. Sports and competition had always been my escape. Running for miles was the remedy for a hyped-up, sad brain. Boxing was the outlet for frustration. Competition focuses and distracts you, and believe you me, distraction was my saviour. I could have done a PhD on that alone!
And human science was more fun. Like nature, it begins to merge into art. Systems are not just the sum of their parts they behave in ways you don’t expect. But it wasn’t meant to be. The obvious path forward was a PhD, but doors kept closing. The universe, it seemed, knew something I didn’t.
Searching for a Life with Meaning
I left the lab and continued some remote work, but I knew I needed more than a job. I was searching for a life that felt meaningful.
I spent years exploring different paths living in Brazil for eight years so I could embrace my passion at the time Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Three of those years, I spent working outdoors on a farm and learning agriculture. Those were formative years. I got my hands dirty. I raised chickens and cattle. I watched the weather and lived without internet, TV, or shops.
I began to see systems again: plants, trees, water, wind, decay, and regeneration. I was a terrible farmer it felt like herding cats all day. It’s a brutal existence: blistering heat, and stubborn animals. By the time I’d had to pull my fifth cow out of a sinkhole, I knew working with animals wasn’t for me.
But trees that was where I found solace. The orchards, the forests I’d sit for hours under those massive trees in the shade, perched on their flared roots. I started learning about them. My interest grew. A local rock climber taught me how to climb trees big Chilean pines. I loved it. I found a training provider out in Brazil and did my tree climbing / aerial rescue certificate. I kept learning. Until I realised, I wanted to come back to the UK and train properly.
That longing to live with nature, not just study it never left me. And eventually, it led me here. Arboriculture didn’t just tick the boxes of being active and outdoors. It offered me something I hadn’t had in a long time: a sense of purpose.
Being an arborist, for me, is the ultimate combination of art and science a unique combination of craft and skill, knowledge, science and intuition.
A Different Kind of Arborist
When I founded my own tree surgery business, it wasn’t because I particularly wanted to become a business owner I just couldn’t find a company that reflected my values: about trees, about people, about work. So, I built my own.
After a few years working in the commercial sector of the industry, I realised there were some real flaws with it. Speed and productivity were placed above everything else, and newcomers were caught in a kind of conundrum wanting to climb to gain experience, but not being productive enough to be given the opportunity to climb. And when they did get the chance, they were hurried the entire time.
The definition of a good arborist was never about speed that’s a concept created by business models, because “time is money.” It’s a real shame. I believe nothing good comes from that approach. Employees become tired, burnt out, and just want to get to the end of the job as fast as humanly possible. I think it’s possible to build a business around a different set of values.
To become a tree surgeon in the UK, you don’t need any qualifications whatsoever you can literally buy a chainsaw and off you go. I was really shocked when I discovered that. You don’t even need to know what species of tree you’re working on. And yet, we’re the guardians of trees. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.
Knowing trees even at the most basic level helps you stay safe. You learn about the fibrous properties of wood, what kind of anchor points are reliable in which species, and how different trees behave under stress. That knowledge protects you.
It’s a real privilege to climb trees. You get to be somewhere most people have never been. I never imagined that my path would lead me to climbing some of the biggest trees in the world the giant sequoias of California. As Meg Lowman says in her book The Arbornaut, the treetops are the eighth continent an unexplored realm and when so much of the Earth has already been exploited by tourism, there’s something very special about being able to access such untouched places.
When I first started climbing trees, I was not a natural! In fact, so far from being a natural, I was like a deer startled in headlights all the time, moving in completely the wrong direction. I found it incredibly hard and I was really crap at it. Despite years competing in sport, including rock climbing, none of it seemed to help me at all. If anyone could embody Murphy’s Law, it would be me and my rope. If the rope could get caught on something or wrap around my leg it did. Full of hope and excitement when I first started on the tools, I laced up my metaphorical Nikes… and quite literally did not do it. I fell flat on my face before I’d even got two feet off the ground.
Climbing and rope management is an enigma in itself. And once you’re in the tree, you have to work out what the hell to do with the tree. And then there’s the chainsaw, and a greenhouse underneath the tree, and a swimming pool, the public and fast-moving traffic. There’s a lot to get your head around.
Being a Woman in a Man’s World
I wasn’t unfamiliar with male-dominated spaces, but entering arboriculture was still a challenge. Misogyny is most definitely alive and well but some of my biggest allies have been men in the industry.
That said, I felt I had to prove myself just to be taken seriously as a woman, and as someone who doesn’t fit the stereotypical mould. I’m a small-framed female, not massively strong compared to many of the men. But that’s absolutely not a problem. The equipment we have now means smaller-bodied climbers can work just as efficiently and productively. In fact, that’s one of the great advantages of entering the industry today. I just wished I had been more confident in myself to stay true to what I knew was right for me and not being coerced into doing a task a different way that would cause injury. The right tool for the job for example, is dictated by your physicality, your technical ability and confidence level, not what someone else thinks will make you faster.
Women have so much to offer this field different strengths, different attention to detail, different ways of working and communicating. I’d love to see more women coming into arboriculture, but we also need to make the industry a more welcoming place. Technology companies have stepped up, designing gear that makes this industry more inclusive, now it’s our turn to shift the culture and challenge the old stereotypes.
Climb with Confidence
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