Tree Pruning in Huntly, From New Street Trees to Old Gums

Start with a job we see often. A couple on a lifestyle block on the northern edge of Huntly ring because the river red gum beside the house has dropped a dead limb onto the carport, and while we are there could we do something about the row of young trees along the driveway that are growing sideways in the wind. That one call covers most of what tree pruning in Huntly involves: deadwooding a mature native so it is safe to live under, and formative pruning of young trees so they grow into good ones.

How that typical Huntly pruning job goes

Tom looks at the red gum first. Eucalypts shed branches as a matter of course, especially in a dry summer, so the question is not whether it will drop wood but where. The climber goes up, removes the dead limbs over the carport and the driveway, and lightly thins the section of crown that hangs over the roof so there is less weight and less shade on the solar panels. Nothing living is cut that does not need to be. Big red gums do not like being over-pruned; strip out too much interior growth and the tree responds with a flush of weak shoots and sunburnt bark.

The driveway trees are a different exercise. They are a few years in, staked when planted and never touched since. Formative pruning means picking the strongest leader on each one, removing the stems competing with it, and lifting the lowest branches a little each year so the trunk develops without leaving big wounds later. Twenty minutes a tree now saves a heavy job in fifteen years. The stakes come off where the trunks can stand on their own, the brush goes through the chipper, and the mulch ends up around the same trees.

What is different about pruning in Huntly

Huntly is one of the fastest-growing parts of Bendigo, and every new estate street comes with council street trees and a front-yard planting scheme. The result is thousands of young trees at the same stage of life, growing in flat, open ground where the north wind pushes them all in one direction. Formative pruning in those first years is the difference between a street of well-shaped trees and a street of forked, leaning ones that need reducing before they are twenty. The clay-loam soil also matters: it waterlogs in a wet winter and cracks in summer, so young trees stress easily and should be pruned lightly and at the right time rather than hard and whenever.

Then there are the old trees. River red gums line Bendigo Creek and the Huntly Streamside Reserve, and grey box and yellow gum stand in paddocks all around the township. These carry the deadwood habit of all eucalypts and drop limbs in the heat of January without warning. Deadwooding, careful crown thinning and clearance pruning over roofs, sheds and driveways keep them safe without taking away what makes them worth having. Under some planning overlays, heavy pruning of a native tree needs a permit; we check for your address before we start.

Huntly's other pruning story is its old homestead gardens. The district was growing fruit and vegetables for the goldfields before Bendigo had a town hall, and plenty of farmhouses still have an apricot, a fig, a quince or a row of plums well past pension age. Stone fruit is pruned after harvest in late summer so the cuts dry out, pome fruit in winter, and a neglected old tree is brought back over two or three seasons rather than all at once. Rural blocks also have the private service line from the road to the house running through or past trees, and we prune to keep the clearance those lines need.

Our pruning process, from quote to clean-up

• Look before cutting. A qualified arborist assesses each tree and tells you what should come off, what should not, and whether a permit applies.
• Cuts to AS 4373. Every cut is made at the branch collar or back to a lateral, no flush cuts, no stubs, no painting wounds.
• The right amount. Deadwood out, crown thinned where it genuinely helps, and no more than the tree can cope with in one season.
• Timing to suit the species. Eucalypts and evergreens most of the year outside extreme heat, deciduous trees in dormancy, stone fruit after harvest.
• Chipped and tidied. Brush through the chipper, mulch left for you or removed, ground raked before we go.

If a tree needs its height brought down rather than tidied, that is tree lopping in Huntly, done as a crown reduction. Hedges and screening plants are covered on our hedge trimming in Huntly page, and a tree that is dead or beyond saving is a tree removal in Huntly job. The same crew handles tree pruning in Epsom, tree pruning in Eaglehawk and tree pruning in Bendigo. See the Huntly suburb page for all our local work, and the main tree pruning service page for the arboriculture behind it.

Tree pruning in Huntly: common questions