Tree Pruning in Golden Square, Bendigo

Good tree pruning in Golden Square is the least dramatic tree work we do and probably the most valuable. Nothing comes down, the tree keeps its size, and a few hours on rope leaves it safer, healthier and better suited to the small block it now lives on. Below are the questions we get asked most by owners in the suburb, answered plainly.

What does pruning actually do for a tree?

Four different things, depending on what the tree needs. Deadwooding takes out dead and dying branches, which is where most of the risk in a mature gum sits. Crown thinning removes a modest share of live growth, spread evenly through the canopy, so wind moves through it rather than against it and light reaches the inner branches. Formative pruning shapes a young tree while it is small, so it never grows the co-dominant leaders and rubbing branches that cause trouble later. And clearance pruning gives a set distance between the tree and a roof, a shed, a footpath or a line. None of these change the overall size of the tree much; that is a crown reduction, which is what our tree lopping in Golden Square page is about.

Which Golden Square trees need it most?

The suburb's oldest streets were laid out along Bendigo Creek in the 1850s and the trees are a record of everything planted since. Sugar gums and radiata pines from the windbreak era are now huge, and both carry deadwood: the gums in the upper crown after dry summers, the pines in the lower limbs that have been shaded out. Remnant grey box and yellow gum on the rise toward Golden Gully and Maiden Gully grow on thin, stony box-ironbark soil and show dieback at the tips when a season turns against them. Peppercorns are everywhere in the older parts, including the heritage-listed one at the former primary school on Laurel Street, and old peppercorns need their long weeping limbs kept in check because the trunks are often hollow. Then there are the fruit trees: apricots, plums, apples and figs planted in the backyards of weatherboards that have been in the same family for generations, mostly unpruned for years and carrying fruit nobody can reach.

When is the right time to prune here?

Bendigo's climate gives a clear calendar. Deciduous trees and pome fruit are pruned in late winter while bare; apricots and other stone fruit are better done straight after harvest in late summer, because open wounds through a wet Golden Square winter invite disease. Eucalypts and pines can be pruned most of the year, but we avoid heavy work in the hottest weeks and in the middle of a hard frost run. Storm-damaged trees are pruned when they are damaged, whatever the month, and our line is open around the clock for that.

Who handles branches near the powerlines?

Overhead lines run along most of Golden Square's older streets. Powercor is responsible for keeping vegetation clear of its distribution lines, on both public and private land, and it runs its own cutting program. The private service line from the pole to your house is a different matter: that one is the property owner's to keep clear, and we can prune around it. Where branches are close to bare conductors the work has to be done by crews trained for it, and we will tell you if that is what your tree needs rather than guess.

Do I need council approval to prune a tree?

Routine pruning does not normally need a permit. The exceptions in Golden Square are trees that are individually heritage listed or named in one of the precinct citations added under the recent planning amendment, and trees covered by a vegetation or environmental overlay, where the City of Greater Bendigo may want to see what is proposed. We check your address before we start and, if a permit applies, we say so and help with the paperwork.

What is different about pruning on a subdivided block?

Space. A gum that once stood in the middle of a miner's residence area now has two houses within a few metres of its trunk, so the priorities are clearance from both roofs, weight off the limbs over them and keeping the neighbours on side. Access is usually a side gate, so brush is carried out and chipped in the street. It is careful, unhurried work and it is what we do most in this suburb. We prune the same way for tree pruning in Kangaroo Flat and tree pruning in Maiden Gully, and our main tree pruning page explains the standard in more detail. If the job turns out to be a hedge rather than a tree, hedge trimming in Golden Square is its own page.

Golden Square pruning questions, answered

What a typical Golden Square pruning job looks like

A representative visit is a Victorian weatherboard in the Laurel Street precinct with a mature grey box in the back corner and a neglected apricot by the shed. The grey box gets deadwooded through the upper crown, two limbs over the neighbour's roof are shortened to laterals, and the canopy is lifted enough to clear the shed. The apricot gets its centre opened and the tallest wood brought down so the fruit can be picked from the ground. Everything is chipped on the street and the chip is left in a pile by the vegie patch because the owner asked for it. Half a day, two people, no drama, and the tree is booked for another look in a few years. The rest of our work in the area is on the Golden Square suburb page.