Somersby
Tree removal in Somersby
Tree removal, pruning and stump grinding in Somersby, from blocks beside Brisbane Water National Park to lots in the business park.
Tree work in Somersby
A heritage garden, an old fig and wet gullies
The State Heritage Inventory gives Linton Gardens aesthetic significance as a large and varied mature garden, once the garden of citrus pioneer Alexander Hunter. Its mature trees are part of what the listing protects, so pruning or taking one out starts with a heritage approval from council, a separate path from the usual tree works application.
Gosford City Council's Significant Tree Register named a small-leafed fig planted in the 1860s on a private block. A fig of that age spreads a broad plate of surface roots under heavy limbs, so trenching and machinery are kept off its root zone, and because it is on the register, council is asked before any work.
The parks service describes Somersby Falls picnic area as a place of tall trees and lush rainforest beside Floods Creek. Blocks that back onto damp gullies like that one grow tall timber on steep, wet ground, so a removal is rigged and lowered in sections, and nothing is let fall into the creek or the national park.
Services in Somersby
Old figs, steep ground and listed trees
Tree pruning
Heavy limbs on old figs and garden trees taken back one branch at a time, to a written specification.
Stump grinding
Stumps on steep bush blocks ground where the machine can stand, or cut low and left where it cannot.
Tree removal permits
Heritage listing, the old register and the business park rules each send a Somersby tree down a different approval path.
How it works
From the first message to a written quote
The council question is settled before any price, and nothing is booked until you have said yes to a quote in writing.
- 1
Tell us what the tree is doing
Where it stands, what it is close to and what you would like done about it.
- 2
A contractor comes to see it
A tree contractor who covers your suburb looks at the tree, the access and what is underneath it.
- 3
The council question is answered
Height, trunk size, distance from the house and the species decide whether a permit or an exemption applies.
- 4
You get it in writing
Scope, timber, stump and date on one page, and nothing is booked until you have said yes.
Somersby questions
Fire history, business park lots and council's turpentines
Is bushfire a real risk on a Somersby block?
It is. The parks service's fire history layer records a wildfire named Somersby Fall Road that began on Christmas Eve and was out four days later. It also holds a prescribed burn of about 535 hectares named for Somersby, so dead trees near the house, limbs over the roof and thick growth beside buildings are dealt with before each summer.
Can trees on a business park lot be taken out?
Only after the planning rules for that land are read. The council's planning scheme says consent for development in Somersby Business Park must not be granted unless the ecological and Aboriginal heritage characteristics of its land will be protected and appropriately managed. A removal on one of those lots is checked against the key sites map and any consent conditions before it is priced.
Who decides on a branch from the listed turpentines?
Council does. Gosford City Council's register listed a landmark stand of turpentines in a road reserve and recorded council as the owner, so a job on the next block keeps machinery, root cuts and falling limbs clear of the stand and raises any branch over the boundary with council first.
