Tree Felling in Claremont, Cape Town

What tree work in Claremont actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Claremont

Claremont's trees split into two groups that need completely different conversations. The older properties still carry the big stuff — oaks, planes and the occasional enormous fig — often with a townhouse block put up alongside them in the last couple of decades. Arderne Gardens, right in the middle of the suburb, shows what the Victorian planting here was aiming at: an 1845 arboretum that now holds the largest collection of Champion Trees in South Africa, including a Moreton Bay fig that is one of the biggest trees in the country. The second group is everything planted since the subdivisions started. Fast screening trees and palms shoved in against a boundary wall to block a neighbour's window, now three times the size anybody planned for, with roots into the wall footing and fronds hanging over the parking bays.

Getting to the tree: access on Claremont properties

More of our Claremont work is complex work than anywhere else in the Southern Suburbs, and a complex adds a step before the saw ever starts: somebody has to actually authorise it. If the tree stands on common property that is the body corporate or the managing agent, not the owner whose window it is blocking. We quote the trustees directly and put it in writing so nobody is left guessing who agreed to what. Physically it is tight in there. Visitor bays that have to be cleared first, a boom gate that quietly sets the maximum vehicle height, a courtyard with one narrow route back out to the street. Sectional title also means your drop zone is somebody else's patio. We rig and lower in small pieces, and we tell you upfront which cars need to be moved on the day so the crew is not standing around waiting.

Wind, weather and what it does to Claremont trees

The south-easter causes more trouble here than the mountain's shelter would suggest, because the buildings do the damage. A summer gust funnels between two blocks or lifts over a boundary wall and hits one side of a tree hard while the rest of the garden stays completely still. Trees that grew up in a sheltered courtyard have thin, drawn stems with very little taper, and trees like that snap rather than bend. Winter brings the other half of it. Rain soaks small walled beds that drain badly, and a tree with a restricted root run in saturated soil leans a great deal further than one with room to spread. If a complex tree has started tilting toward the parking bays, get someone to look at it before the next front rather than after.

Permissions and protected trees around Claremont

Sectional title puts a layer on top of the by-laws. Before anything comes out on common property you need the body corporate's decision, and a trustee's verbal yes at the gate is not that — get it minuted. Without that record, an owner who arranges the work can end up carrying the cost of it alone. Underneath that, the national rules do not budge: a species on the section 12 list under the National Forests Act 84 of 1998 needs a licence regardless of who owns the ground, and anything growing on the pavement is the City's. Claremont also holds older pockets among the redevelopment, so it is worth checking your erf against the City's overlay map rather than assuming a big old tree in an established garden is simply yours to remove.