Tree Work Case Study – Conifer Trimming

Introduction

Having recently purchased the property, our client was faced with approx. 200m of lapsed Conifer hedging that had not been cut for many years and was currently 12m in height. This was causing shade to larger parts of the garden and the grass adjacent to the Conifers was in poor condition and mostly moss.

Our Client’s Aim

To restore, what is now a row of Conifer trees, back into a hedge that can be trimmed on an annual basis going forward and maintained as a hedge.

Our Proposal

• The Conifers were trimmed on the garden side to create a straight inside edge using a standard and pole hedge trimmer. The cut arisings were raked up and removed from site.
• The tops of the Conifers were reduced by approx. 7m, to leave them approx. 5m in height.
• A mobile elevated work platform was used to gained access to the top of the hedge and, due to the size and thickness of the branches being removed, a chainsaw was needed to cut the branches.
• The cut branches were put through a wood chipper with the arisings blown into the back of our specialist tree vehicles. The wood chips were brought back to our yard to be re-used at a later date to power a bio-mass power plant.

Result

The 200m row of large Conifer trees were transformed into a 200m Conifer hedge. The hedge was quite sparse on both the top and sides, where it had been cut hard back, but trimming the re-growth on a regular basis will encourage thicker and denser growth. Most hedges require cutting once, or twice, per annum but we would recommend that Conifer hedges are cut at last twice per year.