Tree Felling in Rondebosch, Cape Town

What tree work in Rondebosch actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Rondebosch

Rondebosch is oak country, and a good number of those oaks are not legally yours. The avenues are the character of the place, and the big ones standing on the pavement are City trees — while the ones in the garden right behind them are often the same age and the same species. That species, English oak, is at the top of the shot hole borer host list, so we check every one we are called out to before anyone talks about pruning it. Beyond the oaks there are planes, which the beetle also breeds in, and the older pines and gums that came with the bigger established plots. The failure we see most often is an oak that was topped at some point decades ago. The regrowth comes back thick, crowded and poorly attached at the union, and it is that regrowth which eventually lands on the car.

Getting to the tree: access on Rondebosch properties

A real share of the work in this suburb happens from the road rather than from the garden, and that changes the whole setup. Verge trees mean cones, a spotter and picking an hour that is not the school run. Overhead lines run down a lot of these streets at exactly the height the oaks have grown into, so limbs get roped and lowered instead of dropped, and where a live municipal line is involved we say so and stop rather than improvise. Inside the gardens the constraint is nearly always side access. The older Rondebosch houses sit tight against one boundary with a narrow strip down the other side, so brush and timber come out through a gap barely wider than a wheelbarrow. It is slower and quieter work, and it is exactly why we quote after walking the property instead of over the phone.

Wind, weather and what it does to Rondebosch trees

Rondebosch lies on flatter, lower ground than the suburbs tucked hard against the mountain, so it takes less of the winter rainfall than Newlands does but more open wind across stretches like the Common. The summer south-easter comes over the shoulder of the mountain and picks up speed once it is past, and a mature oak carrying a heavy one-sided crown catches the lot of it. The damage tends to show in winter, though, and the reason is direction. The north-westerly fronts arrive from the opposite side to the summer wind, so a tree that has spent thirty years laying down wood to brace against the south-easter gets loaded from a flank it has nothing prepared for. That is the classic winter failure here: a big lateral tearing out of the union on a tree that looked perfectly sound in January.

Permissions and protected trees around Rondebosch

This is the suburb where the verge rule bites hardest. The oaks lining these streets stand on the road reserve, and trees on City land — street verges included — may not be pruned or removed without written permission. That is set out in the City's Urban Forest Policy, and the route is a request to your district's Recreation and Parks operator. However much the tree outside your gate feels like yours, you rake its leaves every autumn, its roots are under your wall, you cannot touch it yourself. We are happy to walk out and look at a street tree with you and say plainly what we think is wrong with it, so you have something concrete to put in that request. What we will not do is cut it. Inside your boundary the decision is yours, subject to the protected species list and to whether your erf sits in a declared heritage overlay.