He actually wanted to go into Forestry (the care of multiple trees – crops) and so then went on to Newton Rigg in Cumbria and finally Sparsholt College in Hampshire.

His career began Managing 1,800ha of MoD owned Breckland forest in his home county of Norfolk, before progressing to a Rural Estate Manager’s role for a private facility management company overseeing the entire 10,000ha East Defence Training Estate (DTE). At this time he also seemed to be providing regular tree and forestry guidance to the other 9 national DTE Rural Estate Managers responsible for the remaining 200,000ha within the UK, so in 2007 he was promoted to Head Office and spent 6 happy years travelling the UK, assisting the management of some of the most stunning places. During his time working across the entire DTE, Ross became a professional member of the Institute of Chartered Foresters and rediscovered his love for Arboriculture and specifically wood decay fungi. He therefore re-trained to become a Professional Member of the Arboricultural Association. Amongst many other successes at this time, Ross negotiated the timber harvesting gain share agreement with the MoD, which marked the beginning of the commercial harvesting of the previously undermanaged 30,000ha of MoD woodland. He also developed, rolled out and supervised the tree hazard assessment process for the entire DTE.

Subsequently he and his young family moved to the South of France for 3 years, where he worked as a self-employed arboricultural and forestry consultant in France, the UK, USA and even Cyprus. On returning to the UK, Ross worked as Senior Forest Manager for Savills in the South of England and Rural Projects Manager for Landmarc in Norfolk before joining Oakbank in May 2018 as Woodland Division Manager.

Get in touch with Ross