Tree Pruning in Eaglehawk, From Cottage Elms to Bush-Block Ironbarks

Most of what we prune in Eaglehawk was planted by people who are long gone: elms and pines from the borough era, fruit trees behind the miners' cottages, and the gums that were there before any of it. Good pruning keeps those trees safe and useful for the next owners without leaving the scars that bad pruning does. What follows is a typical day, the local conditions that shape it, and the way we work.

A typical day pruning in Eaglehawk

First stop is a weatherboard cottage a few streets back from Brassey Square. There is an elm in the back corner that has been there longer than the current roof, and its lower limbs are resting on the iron. The gutters fill every autumn, and there is a fair amount of dead wood in the top that drops sticks on the clothesline. The job is a crown lift to get two or three metres of clear air over the roof, a full deadwood through the canopy, and a light thin on the house side so the winter sun reaches the kitchen. The climber does all of it from a rope, and the cuts are made at the branch collar so the elm seals cleanly.

Same block, a couple of fruit trees along the side fence: an apricot and a plum, both let go for a few years. The apricot gets its shape back with a handful of well-chosen cuts and the plum is opened up so air moves through it. That is the kind of small job that gets added on while we are there.

The afternoon is out toward Eaglehawk North on a larger block backing onto the box-ironbark. An old ironbark and a grey box lean over the driveway, both carrying dead limbs the size of fence posts. Deadwooding those, thinning the crowns to take some sail out of them, and lifting them clear of the drive is a half-day's climb. Nothing is taken that does not need to go; the point is to keep the trees and lose the hazard.

What Eaglehawk's gardens throw at a pruner

The township's housing runs from the miners' cottages of the gold years, through 1920s and 30s homes with generous gardens near Don Street, to newer estates on the edges, and each brings its own trees. The old cottage yards are the ones with elms, pines and fruit trees planted far too close to the house; the interwar gardens have the biggest exotics; and the fringe blocks near the Greater Bendigo National Park carry remnant ironbark and box that were never planted at all.

Ground matters as well. Around Lake Neangar, Lake Tom Thumb and the Eaglehawk Creek flats through Canterbury Park the soil stays wet, and trees there grow soft, fast wood that needs a lighter hand. Up on the rises the clay is thin over quartz and old mullock, and gums on that ground shed dead limbs freely after a dry summer, so deadwooding is an every-few-years job rather than a once-off.

Then there are the powerlines. Nearly every street in the township is wired overhead. The distribution lines are the network's responsibility and their contractors prune to them; we look after the tree on your side of the line and the service cable to the house, keeping the clearances the rules require. Where a tree sits under the heritage overlay near the Town Hall precinct, pruning is normally fine without a permit; removal is a different matter and is covered on our tree removal in Eaglehawk page.

How we prune

1. Walk the tree with you. We agree what needs to change: clearance, light, dead wood, weight over a structure, or shape. That becomes the brief and nothing outside it gets cut.
2. Choose the right operation. Deadwooding for hazard, crown lifting for clearance, thinning for light and wind, reduction for size, formative pruning for young and fruit trees. Each is a defined operation in AS 4373 and we name which one we are doing.
3. Climb, do not spike. Rope and harness on any tree that is being kept. Spikes wound the trunk and are only ever used on removals.
4. Cut at the collar. Every cut is made just outside the branch collar, with the weight of the limb taken first so the bark does not tear. No flush cuts, no stubs.
5. Clean up and chip. Brush is dragged to the front, chipped at the kerb and taken away, or left as mulch if you want it. The yard is raked and the gutters checked if we have been working over them.

On timing: deciduous trees such as elms, plums and apricots are best pruned in winter, apricots on a dry day to keep disease out of the cuts. Eucalypts can be pruned most of the year; we avoid the worst heat of January and February, when a tree is already under stress.

Where a hedge rather than a tree needs work, see hedge trimming in Eaglehawk; for over-sized trees see tree lopping in Eaglehawk. We prune across the neighbouring suburbs too: tree pruning in California Gully, pruning in Epsom and tree pruning in Bendigo. The main tree pruning service page explains each operation in more depth, and the Eaglehawk suburb page covers everything else we do locally.

Pruning questions from Eaglehawk gardens