Some people call Noel Boyer “the crazy tree guy,” but it doesn’t bother him a bit.
A certified arborist through the International Society of Arboriculture since 2008, Boyer bought All About Trees LLC six years ago when the former owners were retiring.
“It was a very small company when I bought it, and it is still small now, although we have seven employees, and five are ISA-certified arborists,” Boyer says. “We have tripled the sales of the company in that time.”
After graduating from Missouri State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Boyer went to work for a local tree-care company, not knowing at the time that he was nurturing a budding career.
He learned, however, that not only did he like caring for trees – he likes climbing them, too.
Boyer entered his first tree-climbing competition in 1997, and he won the ISA Midwestern Chapter Championship in 1998.
Since then he has won the Midwestern championship five more times, logging a ninth-place franchise at the international championship in 2004.
“I have taken great pride in (giving training for) proper tree care and tree climbing to many others. Springfield has become a hotbed of fantastic tree climbers because we all train together despite our affiliations with competing companies,” Boyer says, noting that a Springfieldian has won the Midwest tree-climbing championship in 10 of the last 12 years, and the city has several climbers in the Top 10 annually.
“My company, All About Trees, took first, second, third and fifth places at last year’s Midwest Tree Climbing Championship,” Boyer says. “We are full-fledged tree climbing junkies.”
Boyer, also an ISA-certified master arborist since 2008, is passionate about encouraging proper and safe tree care, whether through his role on the advisory board for Ozarks Technical Community College’s turf and landscape management department, chairman of the local chapter of the Missouri Community Forestry Council or on the city’s Tree City USA citizens’ advisory committee.
“In 2008, I arranged a group of arborists from volunteering tree care companies to perform hazard pruning at Springfield Nature Center so they could open up trails after the ice storm,” Boyer says, noting that there’s another volunteer project in the works to car for trees at the National Cemetery.
In 2010, he taught eight different one-to-two-day classes about safety and tree climbing in four states.
He’s also given numerous presentations to City Utilities line crews, garden clubs and forestry classes at Ozarks Technical Community College.
“I’m fairly shameless about jumping in front of anyone who will listen to me talk about properly caring for their trees and what we can do to keep Springfield’s urban forest healthy and safe,” Boyer says.
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