seems a couple of 'Travellers' in the South of England hit on a good way to make money. They posed as tree surgeons and offered to carry out unnecessary work at extortionate prices.
They were eventually reported to the Police by a householder after they tried to persuade him that the poplar tree in his garden was in a dangerous condition. Thing was, it wasn't a poplar tree, it was a telegraph pole with ivy growing up it!

I think that I will never see,
A pole as lovely as a tree........

FC