Tree Felling in Constantia, Cape Town

What tree work in Constantia actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Constantia

Constantia gardens are old, and so are the trees standing in them. Much of the valley was laid out around the wine farms long before the houses arrived, so you get English oaks, stone pines and camphors that were planted with a paddock's worth of room around them. That history is what we get called about. The oak that had space to spread now has a garage under one side and a pool under the other. Stone pines carry enormous top weight on a root plate that stays surprisingly shallow for the size of the tree. Camphors go wide rather than tall, and their surface roots start lifting driveway edges and paving. English oak also sits in the top category of the shot hole borer host list, which matters more here than in most suburbs, because down this valley the oak is usually the biggest thing on the property. We check for entry holes and staining before we quote anything.

Getting to the tree: access on Constantia properties

Access on these plots is about distance, not width. The gate is fine, the driveway is fine, and then the tree turns out to be the better part of a hundred metres from anywhere a truck can actually stand. That changes the shape of the job — we bring the chipper as close as the ground allows and carry or drag to it, and the clearing takes longer than the felling did. Plenty of properties here back onto the greenbelt paths that run through the valley, so the rear boundary is public open ground rather than a neighbour's wall. We still drop everything inside your fence line and take it out through your own driveway. Upper Constantia adds slope on top of that. Working across a fall means the escape routes on a big stem get cut before anything else happens. We walk the property with you first and tell you honestly where the truck can and cannot go.

Wind, weather and what it does to Constantia trees

Constantia sits on the eastern flank of the mountain, which is the wet side in winter. The north-westerly fronts come through from about May, and by the third or fourth one the ground has gone properly soft. That is what actually brings the big trees down here — not the wind on its own, but a strong front arriving on saturated soil and the root plate letting go. Summer is the opposite problem. The south-easter blows for days at a stretch and works away at any limb with a weak union in it, which is when we get the calls about a torn branch hanging over a driveway. If a tree already worries you, the middle of a winter storm is a bad time to find out you were right.

Permissions and protected trees around Constantia

Two separate rulebooks can land on the same tree. Nationally protected species are declared under section 12 of the National Forests Act 84 of 1998, and section 15(1) means cutting, disturbing or damaging one needs a licence no matter who owns the land. Real yellowwood and Breede River yellowwood are both on that gazetted list and both turn up in older Cape gardens, so identifying a tree properly is worth doing before you decide it is coming out. Separately, the City has Heritage Protection Overlay Zones, and inside a declared one the permanent removal of trees needs approval first. Those overlays follow historic conservation areas rather than suburb boundaries, so the only answer worth trusting is your own erf checked on the City's map. And any tree standing on the pavement belongs to the City, not to you.