Tree Felling in Wynberg, Cape Town

What tree work in Wynberg actually involves

The trees we deal with most in Wynberg

Wynberg's tree stock reflects two quite different halves of the suburb. In the old village lanes the gardens are small and the trees in them are anything but — oaks and other mature plantings that made good sense when the cottages went up and now fill the entire back yard. There is nowhere left to grow into, so the crown pushes out over your roof and the neighbour's, and the roots go under whichever wall or drain is nearest. Out toward Wynberg Park the gardens open up and you find the bigger conifers, gums and pines that need proper climbing work — the park has kept a conifer garden since it opened in 1902, and the gardens around it went the same way. Gums are what we get called to most on that side: fast, heavy, inclined to drop a large limb without much warning, and almost always planted far closer to a boundary than they should have been.

Getting to the tree: access on Wynberg properties

The lanes in the older part of Wynberg were laid out long before anyone owned a chipper. Some are a single vehicle wide with no turning space at the end, and a fair number of the cottages open straight onto the pavement with no side gate at all. Where there is genuinely no route around the house, the brush and timber come out through the front door or over the roof on ropes, in pieces small enough to carry by hand. That is slower work and we would far rather say so before you accept the quote than surprise you with it on the day. The larger gardens over on the park side are a different proposition entirely — proper driveways, room to stand the truck, and we can work at normal pace. We price the two halves of this suburb differently because they honestly are different jobs.

Wind, weather and what it does to Wynberg trees

Wynberg sits lower and further out from the mountain than Newlands or Bishopscourt, so it is the drier end of the Southern Suburbs and the wind does more damage here than the rain does. The summer south-easter runs down this side of the Peninsula for days at a time with little in its way across the more open parts of the suburb. What makes it bite is the small gardens. A tall tree in a walled yard has been sheltered on three sides its entire life and has laid down wood to match that shelter. The moment the wind finds it from the one open flank — a neighbour builds, or a big tree next door comes out — it is suddenly exposed with nothing to resist on. We see that failure after almost every change on a neighbouring property.

Permissions and protected trees around Wynberg

Wynberg carries a lot of conservation-era housing, which makes the overlay question come up here more often than in most suburbs. Inside a declared Heritage Protection Overlay Zone the City's list of activities needing approval includes "any permanent removal or destruction of trees" — so a mature tree in a heritage-character garden may not be a straightforward decision even though the ground is yours. We will not tell you your street is or is not inside one: the overlays follow historic conservation areas rather than suburb boundaries, and any list published online goes stale. Check your own erf on the City's map. There is a species point too — Wynberg Park's ground was indigenous silvertree forest before it was a park, and the silvertree is protected under section 12 of the National Forests Act 84 of 1998. Where approval is needed it comes before the saw, and we will not cut without it.