Can Tree Pruning Be Combined With Garden Clearance?

Yes, and it is nearly always cheaper than doing them separately. More usefully, doing them together produces a better result, because decisions get made with the whole job in view rather than one stage at a time.

Where the saving comes from

Not a discount. Three costs that genuinely only happen once.

• Set-up and travel. Incurred per visit, not per job.
• Access arrangement. Getting a chipper in, working out where a vehicle stands, protecting a route — done once.
• The waste run. The big one. Tree arisings and clearance waste go in the same load rather than two.

The right order

The most common mistake is clearing the ground first because it feels like progress. It is wasted work — tree and hedge arisings land on top of it and the ground has to be cleared again.

What clearing first does buy you

One exception worth knowing. Clearing brambles and undergrowth from around the base of trees before the tree work makes the tree job faster and safer, because the crew can actually get to the trunk and drop material on clear ground.

So a light clearance of the immediate working area first, then the tree work, then the full ground clearance, is often the right sequence on a heavily overgrown site. Worth discussing at quotation rather than assuming either way.

Decisions that get better when it is one job

• How far a hedge face comes back, knowing what is going in front of it.
• Whether a stump is worth grinding, knowing whether that spot will be lawn, paving or border.
• Where material is stacked, so it is not in the way of the next stage.
• Which trees stay, assessed against the finished layout rather than in isolation.
• How much of the ground gets disturbed, which matters for any tree you are keeping.

What to agree before anyone starts

• What the finished garden is meant to be. Even roughly. It changes decisions at every stage.
• Which trees and hedges are staying. In writing, if there is any ambiguity.
• Whether stumps are coming out, and which ones.
• Where the waste goes, and whether any chip is staying on site.
• What is being protected — a tree you are keeping, a wall, a manhole, a septic tank.
• Access and parking, honestly.

Protecting what you are keeping

The half of clearance work that gets ignored, and the one that causes lasting damage. Trees are harmed by garden projects far more often than by weather, and almost always through the roots rather than the branches.

• Most of a tree's roots sit in the top 60cm of soil and spread well beyond the canopy.
• Raising the soil level over the root zone suffocates roots, sometimes fatally, and the tree may not show it for years.
• Trenching for services through the root plate cuts anchoring roots.
• Machinery, spoil heaps and stored materials compact the ground, which does the same damage more slowly.

Keeping plant and materials off the root zone during the work costs nothing and is the single most effective thing you can do for a tree you intend to keep.

And check the permission position early

If any of the trees are in Stourport's conservation area — which covers the canal basin and the streets around it — work to them needs six weeks' written notice to Wyre Forest District Council. A TPO tree needs written consent.

On a clearance project this is worth establishing at the planning stage, because six weeks is easy to build into a timetable and very awkward to discover once the rest of the work is booked.

More Stourport-on-Severn Tree Surgery Guides

Also in Stourport-on-Severn

Tree Surgery in Stourport-on-Severn →
Hedge Maintenance in Stourport-on-Severn →
All tree surgery guides →