Tree Removal
Dead, dangerous or badly placed trees taken out whole or dismantled in sections over the house.
Learn more →Pruning is the cheapest tree work you will ever do
A tree pruned properly every few years stays manageable. The same tree left for twenty years becomes a removal, which costs many times more and leaves a hole in the garden. Most of the emergency callouts we get after a storm are on trees that nobody had looked at in a decade.
The pruning types we use
Crown lifting removes the lowest limbs to give clearance over a driveway, a path or a lawn. It is the most common job on North Shore blocks, where street trees and front-garden eucalypts grow down into the entry over time.
Crown thinning takes out selected inner branches — crossing limbs, rubbing limbs, weak growth — so wind passes through the canopy rather than pushing against it. It is useful on dense exotics and on anything catching the westerly across an exposed ridge.
Deadwood removal is exactly that, and on mature turpentine, blackbutt and angophora it is the single most valuable thing you can do for whatever sits underneath.
Clearance pruning pulls growth back off gutters, solar panels, service lines and neighbouring boundaries. Formative pruning on younger trees sets a single leader and good branch spacing early, which avoids the split union that has to be cabled or removed thirty years later.
Where the cut goes
Every cut is made just outside the branch collar, the swollen ring of tissue where the branch meets the parent stem. That collar contains the tree's own defence chemistry, and a cut that respects it seals over. A flush cut removes it and opens the trunk to decay. A stub cut leaves dead wood the tree cannot seal around. This sounds like detail; it is the entire difference between a tree that recovers and a tree that starts rotting from that point.
We do not use wound paint, which is now understood to trap moisture rather than protect the wound, and we do not spike-climb a tree that is being retained — spikes puncture the bark and the wounds stay.
Protected trees still need permission
Pruning is not automatically exempt from council controls. Ku-ring-gai and Willoughby both regulate significant pruning as well as removal, and the amount of live crown you may take without consent is limited. Where a tree stands in remnant Blue Gum High Forest or Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest, assume consent is required and ask first. We will check before the saw comes out.
Booking it
Pruning is usually a half-day job on a single tree and works well bundled with other work on the block. If the tree turns out to be beyond pruning, we will say so and quote removal instead; if what you need is size reduction on an already-compromised tree, that is lopping. For screens and formal hedges see hedge trimming.
Ring (02) 9090 4915, or read the FAQ on permits first.
More services
Explore our other services
Tree Loppers
Weight reduction, branch and deadwood removal on overgrown gums, turpentines and planted exotics.
Learn more →Stump Grinding
Grinding the stump and buttress roots below ground so you can turf, pave or replant over it.
Learn more →Stump Removal
Stump and root plate dug out entirely where footings, pipes or a new slab need clear ground.
Learn more →Palm & Bamboo Removal
Cocos and Bangalow palms taken down in a driveway-width space, and running bamboo dug out properly.
Learn more →Hedge Trimming
Lilly pilly, photinia and murraya screens brought back to a line you can maintain yourself.
Learn more →Emergency Tree Work
Storm damage, split trunks and limbs on roofs, with 24/7 response across the North Shore.
Learn more →
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
What is AS 4373 and why does it matter?
AS 4373 is the Australian Standard for pruning amenity trees. It defines where a cut is made relative to the branch collar, which pruning types are acceptable, and how much live crown can be removed. A cut made outside the collar leaves a stub that cannot seal and becomes a decay entry point, so the standard is the difference between pruning and damage.
When is the best time of year to prune?
For most North Shore species, any time. Deadwood and hazard reduction should not wait for a season. Structural pruning on deciduous exotics is easiest in winter when the framework is visible. Heavy work on a tree already stressed by a dry summer is better deferred. A flowering tree pruned straight after flowering loses the least display.
Can pruning fix a tree that drops branches?
Sometimes. Eucalypts shed limbs in still, hot weather regardless of how well they are pruned, which is a species trait rather than a fault. What pruning does fix is dead and hung-up material, over-extended limbs with poor attachment, and included bark unions that are splitting. An inspection will tell you which of those you have.
Will pruning stop leaves in my gutters?
It reduces them, it does not end them. Crown lifting and clearance pruning pull the canopy back off the roofline so material is not deposited directly into the gutter, and thinning reduces the total volume. If a tree overhangs a roof at all you will still be cleaning gutters, and gutter guard does more for that problem than a saw does.
Free, no-obligation