Tree Pruning in Epsom, From New Estate Trees to Old Gums

Most of the trees in Epsom are younger than the people who own them. Look down any estate street from Epsom Village and you see rows of developer-planted trees, five to fifteen years old, growing in heavy clay on what were market gardens and poultry farms not long ago. Get the pruning right in those first years and you never have a problem tree; do nothing and you pay for a reduction or removal in twenty years.

The trees you find growing in Epsom

In the estates. Barlow Hills, Elmwood, Willowbank and the newer stages along Goynes Road were landscaped with species that handle Bendigo's dry summers and cold winters: ornamental pears, claret ash, crepe myrtle, Chinese elm, small-growing eucalypt cultivars and lilly pilly. They share a few problems. The ground under them is red-brown loam over dense clay that sits waterlogged from June to September, so roots are slow to establish and young trees lean or rock in the planting hole. Summer wind across the flats scorches the exposed side, and nursery stock often arrives with two competing leaders, and if nobody removes one the tree grows a weak fork with bark trapped in the join.

On the older blocks. Between Howard Street, the Midland Highway and the railway you find the survivors: yellow gum and grey box that stood in paddocks, river red gums along Bendigo Creek and Piccaninny Creek, peppercorns near the old house sites, and citrus, apricot and plum trees from when Epsom fed Bendigo's kitchens. These need deadwood, weight and clearance work rather than shaping.

Formative pruning for Epsom's young trees, by age

Formative pruning is the cheapest tree work you will ever pay for: a few minutes with secateurs at year three prevents a rigging job at year thirty. The aim is a single dominant trunk, well-spaced main branches and a canopy that clears the footpath, the driveway and eventually the roof. Here is how it runs on an Epsom block.

Street trees on the nature strip belong to the City of Greater Bendigo, so pruning those goes through a council request rather than us. And every cut we make on your own trees follows AS 4373: to the branch collar, no stubs, no flush cuts, no more taken than the tree can close over in a season.

Deadwood, thinning and clearance on the old gums

The mature eucalypts on Epsom's original blocks shed dead wood constantly; it is normal for the species and also what lands on cars and roofs. Deadwooding means a climber works through the whole crown removing dead limbs to a set size. Crown thinning removes a portion of the live inner growth so wind moves through rather than pushing on a solid wall of leaf, which matters on Epsom's open ground. Neither changes the shape or size of the tree.

Clearance pruning is more targeted: gutters and roofs, driveways for the caravan, and overhead lines on the older streets and the highway frontage. Anything within the exclusion distance of live conductors is done under the proper authority or referred on. Where a whole crown needs to come down in size, that is a reduction and sits under tree lopping in Epsom.

The old fruit trees get their own rules: apple, pear and plum in winter for structure, apricot and other stone fruit after harvest when wounds dry fast, citrus lightly after fruiting. Most of Epsom's leftover orchard trees have gone a decade unpruned and do better with two seasons of reshaping than one hard cut.

A typical Epsom pruning visit

Say a family in Willowbank books us for a Saturday morning. The front yard has a four-year-old ornamental pear with two leaders and a few branches heading at the house: ten minutes with a handsaw, one leader chosen, the rest spaced, low limbs shortened so the trunk can thicken. Along the back fence three young lilly pillies want their tops levelled, done while the climber sets up on the main event: a yellow gum in the rear corner, left from the paddock days, with dead wood over the neighbour's trampoline and one long limb on the guttering. The climber deadwoods the crown, shortens the gutter limb to a side branch, and the ground crew chips everything through the side gate. Two and a half hours, chip left on the beds. We run the same visit in Huntly a few minutes north, in White Hills and central Bendigo to the south, and in the older gardens of California Gully.

If a tree is past pruning we say so; see tree removal in Epsom. Everything else is on the Epsom suburb page and the main tree pruning page.

Pruning questions from Epsom gardens