FROM small acorns successful businesses grow, as father and son firm Tree Tops Forestry, of Coniston Cold, has proved.

Robin Strange started the business in 1973, and now, in its 25th year, Tree Tops Forestry is busier than ever. Eight years ago Robin's son, Jonathan, joined the business, and the family has never looked back.

The duo do a huge range of forestry work, from specialising in dangerous trees and hard woods to consultancy work, including product testing and development and demonstrating for top power tool manufacturer, Makita.

And their main concern - which has become the hallmark of their business, and undoubtedly the secret of their success - is that they leave their customers happy.

"No job is too small, and certainly no job is too big. I take the attitude that I do it like I would want it doing for myself but even more so. We pride ourselves on service and what really matters is customer satisfaction," said Robin, who is well known to motorists and their passengers on the A65 as the man with the multitude of flowers all over his roadside home in Coniston Cold.

Robin always wanted to work in forestry, but a piece of wrong information given to him at a school careers event meant it was 10 years after leaving school before he realised he could make his living from working with trees.

He readily admits that the early years were very hard, but they were worth it, and he is justly proud of the enviable reputation he has built up for jobs very well done with the customer very definitely coming first.

As well as their consultancy work for Makita, which involves demonstrating products at shows and testing new machines before they go on the market, Robin and Jonathan help the company with their research and development of tools and equipment.

They have also established themselves as specialist hedge trimmers, working mainly on garden leylandii, although they do not do gardening.

"For the last 15 years I have specialised in dangerous trees. I don't like mundane work," said Robin, who seems to have a well honed taste for taking risks, as he, along with Jonathan, also counts ice and rock climbing as hobbies.

Between them they have worked out new techniques for dealing with dangerous trees over the years, some of which are now becoming more widely known in the industry.

Robin and Jonathan, who is also a Coniston Cold parish councillor, buy and sell timber, specialising in hard woods, and they also enjoy dealing with yew trees in churchyards, which can pose quite a challenge, bringing a great deal of job satisfaction with them.

They also operate a 24 hour emergency service, and this came into its own last Christmas and New Year, when the storms hit and the telephone never stopped ringing.

"We cancelled Christmas. I went to bed about 10.45pm on Christmas Eve, and the first call came at 11pm. Two trees down in Gargrave. I have never seen anything like it, we passed trees down all over the place just on the way to Gargrave," said Robin.

They have also dealt with sad jobs. On one occasion a tree, which was reputed to be the oldest in Malhamdale had to be taken down after part of it broke off.

"It was such a shame, but it had to come down. It was one of the biggest trees I have seen round here, and it's sad when you lose one like that," said Robin, who guessed the tree, which was rotten inside, was about 400 to 500 years old.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.