A Day in the Life: Interview with Ezekiel Willard, RCA #774 Interviewed by Guy Meilleur; transcribed by Craig Southwell, RCA #692
Guy Meilleur: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for the American Society of Consulting Arborists’ quarterly publication known as The Consultant. We're interviewing a variety of members; veterans and newbies and mid-career Consulting Arborists. I think you might fit in that niche, so tell me, how did you become a Consulting Arborist? Where did you start? Ezekiel Willard: Well, I got started in the green industry in Seattle many years ago. I got my first gardening job when I was about 20 or 21. I had a good friend who had been a gardener for many years. He kept asking me to check it out and see what it was like. At the time I was bartending, working nights. We went down to a gated community called the Seattle Highlands. A lot of those gardens were designed by the Olmsted brothers. It's a pretty special place, and I just fell instantly in love with it and started gardening there. After a few years I realized I needed to learn more, so I started studying horticulture at Edmonds Community College. And then my wife and I moved down to LA, which did not work out for me. It's a beautiful place, but the city was not my cup of tea. I needed to finish school, so I went back up to Seattle. She stayed on there, while I went back to Seattle and finished school. One day a garden that I managed had a tree care company do some pruning on some big trees. I watched who I later found out was Dan Kraus -- who makes tree climbing look like nothing. He's more graceful up there than many of us are walking down the street. I thought to myself, why didn't anybody tell me that was a job? That started my journey into trees. My wife and I looked at moving to Boise, Idaho. I interviewed with a lot of different companies. I was a very new little sapling arborist but boy, those interviews didn't go very well. There were really no companies I wanted to work with. We ended up chatting with a local lady who said, “We need people committed to proper tree care and education.” So we decided, well, let's move to a new state, let's have a baby, let's buy a house, and let's start a business. We just did it all at once. And from there it was all trees all the time. Consulting was a natural progression. I have some good friends over the years who are ASCA consultants, and I came to it a little late. I wish I'd known about it sooner, but the timing was right. I'd had time to learn, and learned how much I still needed to learn. So I joined ASCA in 2021 and went to my first conference in Lake Tahoe. GM: Thank you, that was my next question. EW: I was hooked. Before that conference, I was nervous. I thought, boy, this is, you know, the cream of the crop: How am I going to do this? I'm just a lowly tree geek. But the reception I got from the attendees and the members was just stunning. Everybody was very welcoming. The educational programs were second to none. So that was it, I have been every year since then. I got my RCA in 2022, then the TPAQ® in ‘23 when it got re-released. So that's the story of that journey. GM: How did you find starting a company to be? You said you were a bartender before, so you've got some people skills. Is that something you were able to maintain and still have a part-time consulting practice? EW: Yeah, I'm definitely not a businessman. But I am a people person. So there were some things to learn. My wife helped a lot. She's a lot more numbers oriented than I was at the time. And I've got a really good team. I actually took a few years off to be a fly fishing trout bum, but got bored with that and came back to work. So
American Society of Consulting Arborists®
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Arboricultural Consultant volume 59 issue 2 2026