While some are still in lockdowns, these Londoners are swinging through the trees

LONDON — They call themselves tree surgeons. But swinging from branch to branch and taking turns slicing through trails of dead wood at neck-craning heights, Adam Rendell and Sam Davis look more like urban avengers who have figured out how to vanquish the coronavirus lockdown and still get a paycheck.

“It’s social distancing at its finest,” Davis says after an hour amid the treetops of St. Pancras Gardens, his workspace for the moment in one of London’s greenest boroughs.

When Britain’s March 23 lockdown began, Davis, a 29-year-old former bartender, saw friends working in restaurants and in the film industry suddenly put on furlough. Rendell, a 27-year-old who walked away from an IT job three years ago, said co-workers at his former office endured pay cuts and were told to work from home.

The pair consider themselves lucky to practice a trade that, by its very nature, keeps them safe from crowds and contagion.

Britain this week is beginning to loosen its coronavirus restrictions. But throughout, the green spaces of London, and those who tend them, have been considered essential. The vast royal parks – Hyde, Regent’s, St. James’s – and the neighborhood gardens, such as that of St. Pancras Old Church, next to the rumbling international rail yard, have offered a refuge to city residents with more time than usual, and perhaps more need, for calm and pleasant places.

The two tree-trimmers have been deployed by City Suburban Tree Surgeons and contracted by the Borough of Camden. Their mission on this crisp sunny day: to winnow a gnarly mottled plane tree with leaves and limbs too near the windows of a mental health hospital on the park’s far edge.

Wearing trousers heavy with Kevlar to defang any wrong move with a chain saw, Davis straps on a leather belt laden with ropes and spring-loaded metal shackles, tightens a helmet mounted with earmuffs and prepares to shinny up a line tied to a branch high in the sky.

And then someone begins to scream. And scream again. Rendell, standing guard near the tree’s roots, glances over. The arborists are certainly not the reason for the outburst, which seems to come from inside the hospital, but two months of lockdown have left people on edge.

Rendell says most of those cooped at home have laughed or waved when seeing the two of them bobbing about the branches near their dwellings. Still, a few weeks ago, an irate homeowner turned a garden hose on them. They had to call the police.

“I think the man basically resented that we were outside, or cutting the tree, or maybe being able to work,” Rendell says. “Sometimes, people can be a little odd.”

He laughs at his own early wrong assumptions about what serious tree work would involve: “I was expecting to be in the Essex countryside, listening to birdsong, walking in nature. Then you quickly realize: Our job is really where trees and people interact. It is hard, very hard, and exhausting work. I’ve been up in a tree for six hours.”

In nearby St. George’s Gardens, a tomb-studded field a five-minute walk away, James Brown has been tending to the geraniums, lavender, poppies and peonies for nearly a dozen years. He has worked every day of the lockdown and notices a perceptible coronavirus effect.

The Chelsea Flower Show, London’s sumptuous gardening festival that draws in half a million people, was canceled this spring for the first time since World War II. But people who may never have splashed out on a pricey ticket to the show are strolling local parks with fresh intention. They download apps to identify spring blooms and squint at whatever chirps from the trees.

“People are getting in touch with the gardens,” Brown says. “They used to just walk through. Now they are smelling the flowers. Taking photos of the flowers. It’s like they are really seeing these places for the first time.”

Rendell and Davis don’t take much notice of passersby – except to warn of falling branches – though they are mindful of the lush history within St. Pancras.

The tree surgeons turn their attention to a leafy sugar maple with a nasty bit of rot. They cordon it with red-and-white caution tape.

Davis is still soaked in sweat from his early climb. This time, Rendell goes vertical, taking liftoff on a rope anchored to a branch about 20 feet high, to see what trouble lies ahead.

“I only had a vague idea what the work would be, except I knew I wanted to work outside,” Davis recalls of his start three years ago. He now plans a lifelong career. “There’s a lot to learn. You read. You YouTube. And you learn a lot about knots. There are a lot of knots.”

When Davis spies a long arm of dead wood to his partner’s right, Rendell shifts position, his main line taut at a near 45 degree angle, and loops another rope to move toward the offending branch.