Tree Removal and Arborist Services in Willoughby

Bush at the bottom of the garden

We recently completed a large job in Willoughby, and we work right across the suburb and the rest of Willoughby City Council's area, from North Willoughby and Willoughby East through to Naremburn, Castlecrag and Northbridge.

A good part of Willoughby backs onto bushland. Flat Rock Gully, listed by council at Small Street, holds about 14 hectares of remnant bush along Flat Rock Creek. It runs from Flat Rock Drive on its western side to beyond the old Cammeray Bridge near Tunks Park, and private gardens back onto most of its other edges. Willoughby City Council classifies it as a Wildlife Protection Area for the small birds, reptiles and frogs it supports. It is also a central part of the east-west habitat link between the Middle Harbour and Lane Cove River catchments.

That matters for tree work. Under Willoughby's rules, a tree in a defined wildlife corridor or with known habitat value can need a permit regardless of its size, and so can a locally native species that represents the area's original vegetation. On a bush-edge block, a modest native you'd assume is too small to bother with may still be protected.

The gully is sandstone country too. Council records that sandstone was quarried along Flat Rock Creek from the 1880s, and that sandstone retaining walls were built there in the early 1930s. Where a garden has rock close to the surface, it changes how trees root and how deep we can grind a stump, so it's one of the first things we look at.

We would always rather keep a sound tree. Willoughby City Council's assessing arborists generally won't approve removing a tree they find healthy and stable, or one that's only a nuisance because of leaf, bark or fruit drop, bird droppings, insects or branches over the boundary. If that's your problem, we'll quote the pruning that deals with it inside the rules.

• Size, species and habitat triggers checked at the free quote
• Pruning kept inside the 10% over five years allowance, with a record of what was cut
• Help putting together your Vegetation Management Application
• Approval displayed on the boundary 72 hours before we start
• Our own 74 cm stump grinder for narrow side gates
• All pruning to AS 4373 Australian Standard
• $20M public liability and workers compensation
• Alex quotes the job and answers the phone himself

Narrow access, tall screens and climbing work

Many Willoughby blocks have one way into the back garden: a side path or a gate beside the garage. We plan every job around that. Ladders and platforms for screens and hedges, ropes and a climber for anything tall, and small enough loads that they can be carried out the way we came in.

These photos show the kind of work we do across the North Shore: trimming a tall bamboo screen from a tripod ladder, and climbing a large gum in neighbouring Chatswood where buildings on every side left no room to drop anything.