Tree Services in Junortoun

Nearly every acreage block along the McIvor Highway has at least one tree you cannot get your arms around, and most of our tree services in Junortoun are organised around those trees — removal where it is warranted, pruning and crown reduction where it is not, plus stump grinding, windbreak and hedge work, firewood and mulch. TB'S Trees is family-owned and fully insured, based at Axedale a short run further down the highway, and rated 5.0 on Google.

About Junortoun

Junortoun (3551) is the acreage country east of Bendigo, strung along the McIvor Highway between the city edge and Longlea. It was cut out of the same box-ironbark woodland that survives in Manning Reserve and the Honeyeater Bushland Reserve, so the mature trees on the older blocks are grey box, yellow box, red box and yellow gum: slow-grown, hard-wooded, prone to hollows and heavy deadwood. Splitters Creek runs west to east beside the highway and on towards Axe Creek, carrying a wildlife corridor that is a decent argument for pruning a tree rather than felling it. Much of the suburb is Rural Conservation or Low Density Residential zoned, all of it sits in a Bushfire Prone Area with the Wellsford forest to the north, and Powercor's lines follow the highway and run up a good many of the long driveways. The newer subdivisions such as McIvor Forest are a different job again — crowded young plantings rather than remnant giants. Kangaroo mobs move through the blocks on the creek side most evenings, which is one more reason we shut every gate we open.

Tree services in Junortoun

Scale is what separates tree services in Junortoun from the same work done in town. Blocks run to a hectare and more, there are usually several trees rather than one, and the gravel drive from the road to the house can be three or four hundred metres. So the planning is as much logistics as arboriculture: which gate the grinder fits through, where the poly pipe from the dam pump runs, whether the clay verge will rut after winter rain, which run of electric tape has to come down and go back up. Get that right and a single day can cover a removal, a reduction, a row of stumps and a firewood stack by the shed. It is the same crew for all of it, and nothing gets handed to a subcontractor.

Tree removal in Junortoun

Out here, dropping the tree is only half of a tree removal in Junortoun — the other half is what becomes of several tonnes of dense hardwood. In an open paddock with clear fall room it is a straight fell with wedges and a pull line, which is quick and clean. Closer to the buildings a climber dismantles the crown limb by limb and rigs each section down rather than dropping it, and a trunk too rotten to climb is taken apart from an elevated work platform instead. Two local constraints come up often. Branches sitting inside the clearance space around Powercor's conductors change who is allowed to cut what, and we will tell you plainly whether the job is ours. And with Rural Conservation and Low Density Residential zoning plus overlays across parts of the suburb, a planning permit can apply to a native tree, so we check with the City of Greater Bendigo before anyone starts a saw. Then you choose where the timber goes: heater lengths by the shed, chip on the beds, a hollow log laid along the back fence, or all of it away on the truck. Price a simple one through the instant quote, or we quote free on site. More on our Junortoun tree removal page.

Arborist in Junortoun

On a Junortoun block the trees generally came with the land rather than with the garden, and that changes what you want from an arborist in Junortoun. Our crew is trained, ticketed and fully insured. What is worth paying for on remnant box and gum is an honest account of how a particular tree is put together, because a big old tree and a dangerous one are not the same thing, and plenty of owners out here have been told otherwise.

When a Junortoun arborist walks up to a mature grey box or yellow gum, the first read is how the weight is arranged. Long horizontal limbs reaching out over a shed or a parking spot are the ones that matter, because eucalypts can drop a sound-looking limb on a still, hot afternoon for reasons that have little to do with rot. Next come the unions: where two stems have grown up together with bark trapped between them, there is much less wood holding them than the size of the tree suggests, and a seam, a bulge or an old crack running down from the fork is worth a proper look.

Hollows get weighed rather than counted. A hollow spout in a paddock tree is decades of habitat and usually has sound wood all around it; what matters is how much shell is left, where the opening sits against the load, and what stands underneath. Roots are the part nobody sees. A driveway cut through a root plate, a shed pad, or fill spread inside the canopy takes capacity away from a tree years before the crown shows it, which is why AS 4970 is worth raising on any Junortoun block still being built on.

So age on its own proves very little. A big old tree standing over open paddock with nothing beneath it is a low risk whatever its defects, and plenty of the trees we get called to need only a revisit next year, or some careful tree pruning in Junortoun, and nothing more.

Stump grinding in Junortoun

Grinding the stump is rarely the hard part on a block out here; getting the machine to it past the gates, the dam and three hundred metres of gravel is. So stump grinding in Junortoun starts with a walk over the block with you, because acreage carries a bore line, a poly pipe from the dam pump, garden irrigation, septic trenches and the power lead to the shed, and almost none of it is marked. A grinder cuts a couple of hundred millimetres down and goes straight through poly, so where nobody is certain we work shallower and carefully. Old remnant box stumps can be over a metre across with buttress roots running out several metres and grind slowly but cleanly; a line of pine or cypress stumps out of a pulled windbreak is softer going but arrives twenty at a time, which is a day rather than an hour. Grindings usually go into a windrow with the mini loader. See the Junortoun stump grinding page.

Tree pruning & trimming in Junortoun

Most of what worries owners about the big trees here can be settled from inside the crown. Old box carries dead branches as a matter of course — some die back in dry years, some are shaded out, some are old storm damage — and dead box wood is dense enough to stay up there for years, which only matters when it is over a driveway, a trampoline or a roof. So tree pruning in Junortoun usually begins with a climber working the whole crown and taking dead limbs back to the collar where they join living wood. On the way through, that climber gets the closest look anyone will ever get at every union and hollow in the tree, which is the best inspection a big gum can have. Thinning stays deliberately light on eucalypts, because heavy thinning brings epicormic shoots out along the bared limbs and undoes the work; it is spread evenly rather than stripping the interior and leaving tufts on the ends. Every cut is AS 4373, and sound dead spurs well away from anything stay put for the parrots. See the Junortoun tree pruning page.

Tree lopping in Junortoun

The call that comes in as tree lopping in Junortoun is almost always a gum that has outgrown its spot, and what we quote is a crown reduction to AS 4373. Cutting a limb back to a stub leaves a wound a eucalypt cannot close; decay walks down into it while the shoots that erupt below are attached to nothing but rotting outer wood. Five or six years on, a topped grey box on a Junortoun paddock is a heavier limb-drop risk than the tree you started with, and it looks awful in the meantime. A reduction goes back to a living lateral at least a third the diameter of what comes off, keeps the natural outline instead of flattening it, and generally holds three to five years before a light follow-up is worth doing. What it cannot do is turn a twenty-five metre paddock tree into a ten metre garden tree and leave you with a tree; if that is the goal, we will say so. More on the Junortoun tree lopping page.

Hedge trimming in Junortoun

Nobody plants sixty metres of hedge on a rural-living block for looks alone. Out here they are working plants — a windbreak against the northerlies, a dust and noise screen off the McIvor Highway, or the thing that stops the neighbours' headlights sweeping the lounge room — so hedge trimming in Junortoun is measured in tens of metres and judged on whether the plants stay dense right to the ground. Cypress, lilly pilly, photinia, pittosporum and viburnum each want slightly different handling, and the local ground has a say too: the heavy clays hold water through winter while the gravelly rises bake, which pittosporum and some conifers sulk about. Where a windbreak has quietly turned into a row of trees, it stops being a trim and becomes a reduction. Read the Junortoun hedge trimming page.

Firewood & mulch in Junortoun

Grey box, yellow box, red box and yellow gum are among the densest, slowest-burning timbers in Victoria, and they are exactly what stands on the older blocks here. So firewood in Junortoun is often just your own tree: we cut the trunk and heavier limbs into rounds and stack them where you want them, or put the lot through our splitter. If you have no use for it, it comes back to Axedale for our firewood sales, which usually brings the price of your job down. Everything under about 150mm goes through the chipper, and most owners have us tip it as mulch in Junortoun for garden beds, tracks and the bare ground under the trees that are staying; if a job does not produce enough, more comes from our mulch sales. Delivery to Junortoun is free within 20km of Bendigo.

Emergency & storm tree work in Junortoun

Old box and yellow gum shed limbs in a hot northerly and in the front edge of a summer storm, and on a block like these the tree across the drive is also the tree between you and the highway. Emergency tree removal in Junortoun is what the 24/7 line is for: a limb through a roof, a stem split over the machinery shed, a windbreak pine down across a fence with stock on the wrong side of it. We make the site safe first and clear it second, and if a limb is sitting in the powerline clearance space we will tell you straight away that it needs the network's own crew rather than ours. The planned version of this work belongs in autumn and winter, before restrictions come on and before the summer storms find the deadwood for you. Emergencies: 0498 609 887.

Why Junortoun locals choose TB'S Trees

• Set up for acreage. Truck, chipper, mini loader and grinder that suit farm gates, long gravel drives and paddock ground.
• Qualified arborists. Trained and ticketed, pruning to AS 4373, with AS 4970 in play on Junortoun blocks still being built on.
• Fully insured. Full public liability on every property we work.
• Services found before they are cut. Bore lines, poly pipe, septic trenches and the lead to the shed get walked and marked before a grinder starts.
• Wood left where you want it. Firewood rounds by the shed, chip on the beds, hollow logs kept for habitat, gates shut behind us.
• Rated 5.0 on Google from 27 reviews by Bendigo locals.

Junortoun tree services — frequently asked questions

Nearby suburbs we also service

Junortoun shares its southern boundary with Strathfieldsaye and sits between Bendigo and Axedale, where we are based, so blocks in all three often share a day with ours. Every suburb we cover is listed on the service area page.