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Tree Lopping in Junortoun Without Wrecking the Tree

Plenty of Junortoun gums have simply outgrown their spot. Bringing one back to size is a real job, but it is not the job most people picture when they say lopping, and the difference matters for the next twenty years of that tree.

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Arborist climbing and cutting back a large tree for TB'S Trees, who do tree lopping in Junortoun and around Bendigo

People look up tree lopping in Junortoun for a sensible reason: a eucalypt planted thirty years ago on a low-density block now towers over the roof, or a pine windbreak has grown far taller than anyone intended. What follows is a plain explanation of why a qualified arborist will not cut the top off that tree, what we do instead, and how it applies to the trees that actually grow out here.

Quick answer

TB'S Trees handles tree lopping requests in Junortoun as crown reductions to the Australian pruning standard, so the tree ends up smaller, safer and still sound. Phone 0498 609 887 to have one of us look at it.

Why won't you just take the top off my gum?

Because on eucalypts it makes things worse quickly. Cutting a trunk or major limb back to a stub leaves a wound the tree cannot close, and decay moves in. Meanwhile the tree throws up a mass of epicormic shoots from below the stub; they grow fast, attach weakly to rotting wood, and within five or six years you have a taller, heavier crown held on by less sound timber than before. A topped grey box on a Junortoun paddock is a bigger limb-drop and fire hazard than the original tree, and it looks awful in between. That is why topping is discouraged in AS 4373 and why we do not offer it.

So what does crown reduction under AS 4373 involve?

Reduction cuts go back to a living side branch large enough to take over as the new end of the limb, usually at least a third the diameter of the piece removed, placed just outside the branch collar so the tree can seal them. The climber works around the whole crown, taking height and spread back by a modest, agreed amount and keeping the natural outline rather than flattening it. The tree keeps most of its leaf area, seals its wounds and regrows slowly from proper branch tips instead of erupting from stubs. The tree lopping service page for Bendigo goes further into the standard.

Which Junortoun trees get asked about most?

Three kinds, and they behave differently.

The big remnant eucalypt, grey box, yellow gum or red box, left standing when the acreage was subdivided, now with a house a little too close. These can be reduced on the house side and deadwooded, but a 25 m paddock tree cannot be made into a 10 m garden tree and still be a tree. If that is the goal, the honest advice is that tree removal in Junortoun and a replacement in the right spot is the better spend.

The planted gum in the newer estates and along the highway frontages, put in as quick screening and now 15 m tall in a garden bed. These respond well to reduction while young, and we would rather see them reduced every few years than left until they are a removal.

The conifer windbreak: radiata pine and cypress rows on the older rural-living blocks. Conifers do not reshoot from old wood, so a reduction that goes back past green foliage leaves permanent bare stubs. We can take height off where there is green growth to cut to, but a windbreak that has reached 20 m is usually a remove-and-replant conversation. Overgrown cypress hedges are covered under hedge trimming in Junortoun.

Does a reduced tree stay smaller?

Not forever. A properly reduced eucalypt regrows from branch tips at its normal rate, so a reduction on a Junortoun gum generally holds for three to five years before a light follow-up is worth doing. A topped tree is back to its old height in half that time, with worse structure.

Is a permit needed to reduce a tree in Junortoun?

It can be. Much of the suburb is Rural Conservation Zone, with bushfire and vegetation overlays across parts of it, which can bring native tree work within the planning scheme. Pruning to the standard is treated differently from removal, but the rules depend on the overlay on your block, so we check with the City of Greater Bendigo before quoting. Where a tree is close to the Powercor lines along the McIvor Highway and many driveways, clearance from live conductors is a further constraint, and we will be straight about what we can and cannot cut.

A typical lopping call-out in Junortoun

An owner on a two-acre block near Manning Reserve rings about a yellow gum leaning over the carport and wants it lopped in half. We walk the tree together: it is healthy and well rooted, with a lean towards the house that started when it was a young tree reaching for light. We propose a reduction of about a fifth on the house side, cut back to good laterals, plus removal of a couple of dead limbs over the roof and a light thin to let the wind through. The climber does it in a morning, the brush is chipped into a mulch pile the owner keeps, and the gum is still recognisably a gum, just no longer touching the gutter. Owners over the boundary will find the same approach on our tree lopping in Strathfieldsaye page, with a version for the bigger river trees on tree lopping at Axedale. For everything else we do out this way, see the Junortoun page.

Straight answers on lopping for Junortoun blocks

Look closely at where the new growth joins the old cuts: those shoots are attached to decaying stubs and get heavier every year. Topped eucalypts often seem fine for a decade and then start dropping large limbs. A reduction to AS 4373 avoids that by cutting back to sound side branches.
Only as far as there is green growth to cut back to, because pines do not reshoot from bare wood. A modest height reduction on a younger row is possible. On a tall, leggy old windbreak the honest options are to leave it, thin out the worst trees, or remove and replant.
Typically a fifth to a quarter of the crown on the side facing the house, cut back to good laterals, along with deadwood removal. Taking more than that from a mature eucalypt stresses it and brings on the regrowth problems that topping causes.
It helps, by shortening long, end-weighted limbs and removing deadwood, which are the usual culprits. It does not make a eucalypt immune to summer branch drop, which can happen on healthy limbs in hot, still weather, so keep cars and play areas out from under big gums on those days.
Reducing canopy that overhangs the roof and removing deadwood lowers the fine fuel and ember-catching material against the building, which is worthwhile anywhere in the Bushfire Prone Area. It is not a substitute for a defendable space plan, and work under the overlay still needs checking against council rules.

Want the tree smaller, not butchered?

Call TB'S Trees on 0498 609 887. We will look at the tree on your Junortoun block, tell you what a proper reduction can and cannot achieve, and give you a fixed price for doing it right.