Tree Felling in Camps Bay, Cape Town

What tree work in Camps Bay actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Camps Bay

Most of the call-outs we get in Camps Bay come down to two kinds of tree. The first is palms. They're all through the front gardens and along the beachfront strip, and once they're tall the dead fronds and seed stalks come off hard onto paving, pool covers and parked cars. Cleaning a crown at that height is a rope job, not a ladder job. The second is the pines and conifers on the upper terraces. They grow up under the Twelve Apostles with the wind pushing them the same way their whole lives, so you end up with a lopsided crown carrying all its weight downhill — straight over the house on the terrace below. There are milkwoods in some of the older gardens too, and those we handle differently, because white milkwood is a nationally protected species and can't just be cut.

Getting to the tree: access on Camps Bay properties

Camps Bay properties are built in steps up the slope, and that changes everything about how a tree comes down. The garage sits at road level and the garden is two or three flights above or below it, with no way to drive anything to the trunk. So every log, every branch and every barrow of chip is carried by hand up or down stairs. That carry is slow, and it's the quiet reason a quote here reads higher than the same tree on a flat plot — you're paying for the ground you cross, not the cutting. We work out the route before we start and lay boards over paving and pool decks so nothing gets chipped. Parking is the other headache. The streets are narrow, cars line both sides, and in season there is nowhere to stand a truck, so we'll usually agree an early start and be loaded and gone before the road fills.

Wind, weather and what it does to Camps Bay trees

In summer the south-easter comes over the mountain behind you and accelerates straight down the Atlantic Seaboard, and Camps Bay sits square in the path of it — sometimes for days at a stretch. That constant one-directional push is why so many trees here carry a thin, flagged crown on the seaward side and all their weight on the other. Then the winter north-westerly fronts arrive from the opposite direction and load the side the tree never braced for. That's the combination that drops limbs. Add the salt coming off the water, which burns new foliage and rusts anything metal in a brace or stay, and you get trees that are worth looking at after every big blow rather than once a year.

Permissions and protected trees around Camps Bay

Two things are worth knowing before anything gets cut here. First, the top end of the suburb runs up against Table Mountain National Park — the Twelve Apostles above you are park land — so if your boundary touches it, get the line confirmed before work starts, because we can only work on your side of it. Second, a tree on the pavement or road reserve outside your gate is not yours. Street and verge trees belong to the City of Cape Town and have to be applied for, not felled. On your own ground, most planted pines, palms and ornamentals can come out without paperwork. White milkwood is the exception — it's protected under section 12 of the National Forests Act and needs a licence wherever it's growing.