TradeNames: Rose Doyle meets a man who has branched out in many directions but whose business has always been trees

Terence Shaw knows a thing or two about trees. He should. Trees are part of his seed, breed and generation, part of what the Shaws have been about since his father first started "working at timber" in 1925.

Seventy-nine years later Terence Shaw Tree Services will do just about anything there's to be done with trees. They'll prune or fell them, remove stumps, clear sites and perform any and all surgery needed.

A man more than able to see the wood for the trees, Terence Shaw tells the Shaw tree story with style and clarity and, always, an acute care and understanding for the life and times of his father and grandfather.

The working lives of his grandfather, James Hill Shaw, a Parnellite from Tubber, Co Westmeath, and his father, Clement William Shaw, who grew up in Clarina, Co Limerick, had all the drama and sadness of the 20th century decline and fall of the great woodlands and estates.

Terence (Terry) Shaw's work with trees in the 21st century ranges from urban care to suburban pruning and, always, the needs of the woodlands and countrysides.

"My late father started in the business as a boy," Terry, tuned to the natural way of things, begins at the beginning. "He was brought up in Clarina, an estate in Co Limerick owned by Lord Clarina. My grandfather was the stewart on the estate, which was called Elm Park. He'd moved there from Co Westmeath when my father was about six. He had three other children - Constance, Beatrice and Cyril. His eldest, a boy called Leslie, died in infancy.

"Lord Clarina died when my father was about eight years old. He'd had a passion for trees, wouldn't even allow hay be brought through the woods in case it damaged branches, so that the estate was still heavily wooded. A new owner came in and my grandfather, James Hill, moved to Rose Cottage at Clarina Cross where he bought a small bit of land. The castle burned down in the early 1920s, the estate was broken up and all the trees cut down.

"At eight years of age my father was helping local timbermen cut down trees and sell them to the saw mills. With his brother, Cyril, he would hold one end of a cross-cut saw, a timberman the other. They got 1/- a day. Up until 10-20 years ago there were still lots of small time timbermen."

Clement William Shaw worked so well with a timberman called Pa (Patrick) O'Shaugnessy that when his father, James Hill Shaw died, he left the farm at Clarina Cross and went into partnership with Pa. "They travelled on bikes," Terry says, "their domain predominantly Limerick, Clare, the tip of north Cork and a bit of Tipperary. They tied the cross-cut saw to the bar of the bike, the axes and sledge hammers on top of the handlebars and the wedge in the fork under the seat."

When the partnership with Pa O'Shaughnessy ended in the early 1940s, Clement William Shaw went into business on his own. "He had a second World War jeep at one stage," his son says, "and used horses to extract and haul out timber. He was a big man, 6 ft 3" with a lot of muscle power."

A venture with a sawmill didn't last, the lure of the woods proving too strong. Terry Shaw still has the tractor and winch his father bought in Sheils of Ennis in 1956 for £365 and £156 respectively; the old blade acts as a sign across the gate to his yard.

Clement William Shaw married Daphne in 1957 and Terence Clement, their only child, was born in June 1958. Clement William was 46 years old.

"At that stage," Terry goes on, "a lot of the estates were cut out and he was finding it hard to make ends meet so he and my mother moved to Dublin. He put a deposit on the house I live in today and through Jack Nugent, who had a mill at the end of Cork Street, got a contract to cut wood in Bray. County Dublin, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was quite heavily wooded, with lots of gentlemen's residences, big houses on 20 acres or so with pockets of woodland. There was ongoing work for my father. He also began to supply fire logs around Palmerstown."

As a boy, and before the serious suburban growth of the late 1960s, Terry spent his time in the woodlands with his father. "There were some lovely places then and I developed a passion for the woodlands which I still have. My father taught me the trade, the skills of felling trees and extracting timber."

His heart in the woodlands, he left school when he was 16 and went to work with his father. He was just 18 when Clement William Shaw died.

As a young man running a business Terry found it hard to get people to take him seriously. Jack Nugent was dead but his company, still going strong, got Terry work hauling timber from Enniskerry to Cork Street. He was paid £2.50 per ton.

Business had improved by the early 1980s. "I'd developed my own art, a way of felling trees without damaging them," Terry explains. "I liked the life and lived in a caravan. In the late 1960s the elms began to die from Dutch elm disease and I got involved in dangerous tree felling."

He went into business with a merchant who sold high quality timber to the Continental furniture trade. In 1987, after the hurricane in the south of England,Terry joined him in Kent and they formed a partnership; "I was doing what I liked to do, extracting timber."

But the partnership dissolved, his mother's health began to fail and Terry came home. After Daphne Shaw's death, Terry went back to the woodlands, working for nine months on the De Vesci estate in Abbeyleix and for several years after that moving from one estate to another. By the mid-1990s mature hardwood was on the decline, the competition tougher and margins smaller. As the Celtic Tiger kicked in, Terry had people working for him, the dangerous tree and pruning work gathered momentum and that end of the service expanded.

"We had to re-educate ourselves to a certain extent in tree surgery and arboriculture," he says, "since there are standards to be adhered to. We were good at what we did and rounded the corner. The business began to pay the bills."

Terence Shaw Tree Services employs four people - "all young men though I've had women in the past and very good they are too. We're very good at woodland rehabilitation, that's our forte. One of the things I did with my father was look for faults in trees and, over the years, I've learned to spot faults, see trees uprooting, branches falling. I find now I rarely miss a problem in trees because I can bring this root knowledge to bare!

"We offer a complete tree service, from very large to very small jobs, and find ourselves in every sort of situation."

He says it's too early to say if daughters Heather or Holly, at four years and 18 months old, will follow him into the business. Heather, "on a good day", can identify trees. His own view of life and work is that "you've got two choices.You can enjoy your day or not. I'm still with trees and I enjoy my day."