Tree Felling in Bishopscourt, Cape Town

What tree work in Bishopscourt actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Bishopscourt

These are the most heavily treed gardens we work in, and the scale of them catches people out. Bishopscourt properties are large and old, and a number of them were effectively planted as private arboreta — oaks, pines, camphors and a long list of exotics put in when there was genuine room for them to reach full size. Many of them now have. The practical consequence is height. A tree that is honestly thirty metres tall is a completely different job from one that merely looks big from the patio, and it has to be climbed and dismantled from the top down rather than felled. Dense planting is the other issue. Trees that grew up shoulder to shoulder have drawn stems and crowns only at the very top, so taking one out changes the wind loading on every neighbour you leave standing around it.

Getting to the tree: access on Bishopscourt properties

Bishopscourt runs up the slope, and on these properties that is the entire access story. Gardens are terraced, the driveway serves the house and then stops, and the tree that needs to come out sits either above or below the only place a vehicle can stand. Nothing is getting driven to it. We rope and lower onto a clear terrace, then hand-carry or winch the timber back to the truck, and that carry is regularly the longest part of the day. Working across a gradient also takes away the easy option. On flat ground you can fell a stem and deal with it where it lies; on a slope it will run. So on the steep upper properties everything comes down in controlled, tied-off sections even when the tree is nowhere near a building. It costs more and it is not something we negotiate on.

Wind, weather and what it does to Bishopscourt trees

Sitting directly under the eastern face of the mountain, Bishopscourt takes much the same winter rainfall as neighbouring Newlands, and all of it drains down through these gardens on its way off the slope. Ground that stays wet the whole winter under a canopy that never lets sun onto it is precisely the condition root and butt rot want, and on a gradient a compromised root plate has gravity working with it rather than against it. The tablecloth pouring over the mountain above the suburb is the visible version of what these trees actually live in — damp, still air for weeks on end. Then a front arrives with real wind behind it. Tall, heavy, shallow-rooted trees on wet sloping ground is the most dangerous combination we deal with anywhere, and it is concentrated up here.

Permissions and protected trees around Bishopscourt

Bishopscourt sits against Table Mountain National Park, with Kirstenbosch bordering the suburb along Rhodes Drive, and that boundary matters more than people assume — anything on the far side of your fence is not yours to cut, and clearing that reaches over the line needs the managing authority's permission and not just yours. Inside the garden the national list still governs. Section 12 of the National Forests Act 84 of 1998 protects the gazetted species anywhere in the country, and real yellowwood — South Africa's national tree — is on that list, as is stinkwood. Given how old the plantings up here are, we identify before we quote. If a tree turns out to be protected we tell you so and explain what the licence route involves, rather than quietly taking it down and leaving you with the problem.