Tree Lopping & Crown Reduction in Camden

What people mean when they say lopping

Drive into Camden along the Nepean River flats and up into the old town centre and you pass a hundred years of planting decisions. The jacarandas on Argyle Street, the mature canopy around Onslow Park and the showground, the enormous camphor laurels behind the John Street cottages, the river oaks tracking the Nepean below Camden Park. Hardly any of those trees went in with a future carport, power line or second storey in mind. Ten minutes north at Oran Park, Gledswood Hills and Spring Farm the story is younger but heading the same way — fast growers already brushing the eaves.

So people ring up and ask to have a tree lopped. What they usually mean is simple enough: it is too big, please make it smaller. That is a completely fair thing to want. The only thing worth being fussy about is how it gets done.

Reduction, not decapitation

There are two ways to make a tree smaller, and only one of them works.

The old way — topping — is to cut the limbs back to bare stubs at whatever height suits the ladder. It looks dramatic and it is quick. Then the tree panics. Dormant buds fire off dozens of weak shoots from around the cut, all attached to a stub that is quietly rotting from the top down. Four or five summers later you have a taller, denser, structurally worse tree with brittle unions, and you are paying to do it again.

The way it should be done is a crown reduction. Each limb is shortened back to a lateral branch that is big enough to take over as the new leader, so the cut is made at a point the tree can actually seal. The outline gets smaller, the shape stays natural, and the regrowth is properly attached. It takes longer, and it needs someone who is genuinely trained to read a tree — which is exactly why we would rather connect you with a local crew who works that way than with whoever happens to be cheapest that week.

The same thinking applies to a crown thin (taking out crossing and congested limbs so wind moves through instead of pushing) and a crown lift (removing the lowest limbs to get clearance over a driveway or a roof line). Often a job is a bit of all three.

When a reduction is the right call

A reduction earns its money when:

• A big limb is over the roof, the pool, the shed or the neighbour's fence, and you want the weight off the end of it.
• The tree has grown top-heavy and catches wind like a sail — extremely common with liquidambars in the older streets around Camden and Camden South.
• A camphor laurel has thrown a huge horizontal limb with a tight, included-bark union that is going to tear out eventually.
• Light is the problem. A reduction and thin over a north-facing yard in Currans Hill or Narellan Vale can change a house completely.
• A jacaranda or plane tree has gone leggy and needs bringing back into shape with a light hand, not a heavy one.

And it is the wrong call when the tree is already in decline, when the trunk is compromised, or when what you actually need is 60 percent of the crown gone. In those cases we will say so. Sometimes the answer is tree removal, and sometimes it is a lighter, more surgical pruning job instead.

The Camden trees that most often need bringing back

Camphor laurel. The signature old-Camden problem tree. Enormous, dense, shallow-rooted, and not on Council's exempt list — plenty of people assume it is because it is a weed elsewhere, and it is not.

Liquidambar. Beautiful in autumn, huge by forty, and the species we see most often after a wet, windy stretch.

Jacaranda and plane. Brittle wood. They respond well to a considered reduction and badly to a rough one.

Cumberland Plain eucalypts — forest red gum, grey box, and the remnant gums scattered through Grasmere, Ellis Lane and Cobbitty. Reductions on mature eucalypts need care; they do not always take a heavy cut kindly.

Estate stock at Oran Park, Spring Farm and Catherine Field. Ten-year-old trees planted a metre and a half from a slab, growing three metres a year. Get in early and it is a small job forever.

Down on the alluvial flats at Elderslie and along the river you also strike river oak (casuarina), and occasionally the Camden white gum — Eucalyptus benthamii, the Nepean River gum — which is critically endangered and not a tree anyone should be putting a saw into without proper advice first.

What Council needs to know before we start

Camden Council protects most established trees on private land. Under the Camden Development Control Plan a tree is protected once it hits any one of: 3 metres or more in height; a trunk 100mm or more in diameter (300mm circumference) measured 1 metre above the ground; or a branch span of 3 metres or more. That threshold catches almost every backyard tree worth reducing.

Exempt work includes routine trimming of a continuous hedge and minor pruning of branches no thicker than 50mm where it does not harm the plant. A handful of species are exempt entirely — privet, African olive, honey locust, cocos palm and Chinese celtis. Everything else needs an application, which Council assesses within 28 days after fees are paid.

Street and verge trees are not yours to touch. Camden Council's Urban Forest Services looks after them, they are protected under the Local Government Act 1993, and Council notes that fines may apply for unapproved pruning. If a Council tree is the problem, the request goes to Council.

We are not sitting at Council's desk, so where a case is genuinely unclear our advice is always the same: ring Camden Council and confirm before anything is cut. Sources: Camden DCP — Trees and Vegetation and Trees in Camden FAQ.

On the day: access, ropes and your lawn

Camden blocks vary wildly, and access decides half the job. The old town's cottage lots have narrow side paths and a fence you would rather keep. The newer estates have wide streets but tight setbacks and a neighbour's pool three metres over the boundary. Either way, big limbs come down on ropes and get lowered rather than dropped, and the crew works out where the chipper is going to sit before a saw comes out of the truck.

Then it is the boring, important part: everything chipped or loaded, the lawn raked, the gutters checked if we have been over the roof, and the driveway blown down. Chip stays on site as mulch if you want it — green waste and mulching covers how that works. The crews we connect you with carry their own public liability cover, and we can have that confirmed before your job goes ahead.

Come and have a look, then decide

The honest version of this job usually starts with someone standing under the tree with you for ten minutes. Sometimes the answer is a reduction. Sometimes it is a light tidy. Occasionally it is leave it, it is fine, come back in three years — and we will happily say that too.

We work right across the LGA; the suburb-by-suburb rundown is on our local areas page, and there is more about how we work on the home page.

Give us a ring on (02) 4602 1480 for a free, no-pressure look at your tree. Friendly advice, a clear price, and we turn up when we say we will.