Tree removal from enclosed back garden

belisha-beacon

I'd be grateful for any ideas! How can we tackle this garden job without having to remortgage the house In particular, does anyone have any top tips on how to do garden work efficiently when the garden is completely enclosed?

We have a back garden that is enclosed on all sides (neighbours either side and a garden backing onto ours from the next street along, it's a typical Victorian terrace). At the end of the garden are three ENORMOUS sycamore trees. We do love trees but these are not ideal, they keep seeding into other people's lawns and so on, and they are a lot taller than the houses. Picture at https://www.flickr.com/photos/24913705@N08/17046609460/ embarrassingly it was taken 2 years ago and we still haven't got round to sorting it out. They're the ones in the middle, and even though they look like they're right next to the car park there's another garden in between.

Our idea is to have them cut down and then, in the long term, to replace them with three more manageable, native trees. When we last tried, a couple of years ago, we couldn't find tree surgeons willing to take the job on. One guy refused to quote at all, simply saying "It would be too expensive for you" even though we hadn't given a budget - clearly just not wanting to do the job but not wanting to say it. The issue is this problem of getting equipment in and all the logs out. I'm sure we could arrange with our neighbours to have things passed over their garden if needs be, and hopefully we could do a deal with the car park owners to let us use some of that space temporarily, but the people we've asked (admittedly not many yet) just don't seem to want to be bothered with a job that fiddly.

Has anyone else had this issue? How did you deal with it? I wonder if there's any clever ways to get round the issue, maybe by just having a bit done at a time? This is not a problem we can ignore because they're only going to go up in size!

I_have_spoken

Yep, that's going to cost. You're best bet may be a crane in the car-park and 'fly' each piece out as it's cut.

IMHO the trees on either side should do to, they appear way to close to the houses for the size

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkMypwVD_JI

Davesnave

Cherry picker is the way to go, but now is too late to miss both the leaves, and the people saying, "Think of the birds!" although they'll likely not choose sycamores anyway.

We've just had a very benign winter, where I live......:whistle:

silverwhistle

You might want to go and ask on the Arbtalk forum, which is full of professionals. Knowing who locally has got a woodburner might help with disposal of the wood.

Like the other pics on that roll; haven't been for a few years now...

belisha-beacon

Thanks so much everyone who's posted so far!

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Yep, that's going to cost. You're best bet may be a crane in the car-park and 'fly' each piece out as it's cut.

IMHO the trees on either side should do to, they appear way to close to the houses for the size

I thought it would do I wish I'd properly thought about this when we decided to buy the house! I know I'm probably asking how long a piece of string is, but any idea roughly what scale of cost we're talking about? Bearing in mind that I have absolutely no knowledge of tree surgery, I don't know what the going rate for even a basic job is so I've no clue about what I need to save up for. And the car park's a private car park so I'm probably going to have to pay for use of that as well.

The trees on either side of the picture are not in my garden, the one next door to my house (a self-seeded baby of my own bl**dy trees!) is in the garden of a rented house and seeing as the landlord refused to do repairs when water was running out of the attic into the baby's bedroom below, and given the rented it out after it had been used for a cannabis factory still with all the holes in the floor etc, I think it's going to be a tough job to get them to do work there. They might if I pay for it I suppose.

Davesnave wrote: »

Cherry picker is the way to go, but now is too late to miss both the leaves, and the people saying, "Think of the birds!" although they'll likely not choose sycamores anyway.

We've just had a very benign winter, where I live......:whistle:

So you reckon it should be done when it's not in leaf? It's just buds and bare branches at the moment and no birds' nests yet - we do normally get a few nests but nothing so far.

silverwhistle wrote: »

You might want to go and ask on the Arbtalk forum, which is full of professionals. Knowing who locally has got a woodburner might help with disposal of the wood.

Like the other pics on that roll; haven't been for a few years now...

I've never heard of the Arbtalk forum but it sounds like exactly the sort of thing I need - thanks!

sidefx

Davesnave wrote: »

Cherry picker is the way to go, but now is too late to miss both the leaves, and the people saying, "Think of the birds!" although they'll likely not choose sycamores anyway.

We've just had a very benign winter, where I live......:whistle:

Agree, get a cherry picker and get it taken down in parts then lifted out!

Though now is not the time to be felling trees, wait till winter.

Davesnave

belisha-beacon wrote: »

So you reckon it should be done when it's not in leaf? It's just buds and bare branches at the moment and no birds' nests yet - we do normally get a few nests but nothing so far.

Well, down here in the Westcountry, we don't cut hedges after the end of February, unless the situation's dangerous, and we normally leave tree cutting for the winter months.

The likelihood is that by the time you get something organised, those trees will have leafed-up again.

PasturesNew

I'd get them cut into logs, then lay them in the corner of the garden, cover them in earth, stick some rocks on top and call it "the rockery".

If it's wooden fences between all the gardens, you could ask the neighbours if you could remove/refit their panels to get the logs out.

belisha-beacon wrote: »

So you reckon it should be done when it's not in leaf? It's just buds and bare branches at the moment and no birds' nests yet - we do normally get a few nests but nothing so far.

Trees explode almost overnight into leaves etc. Best done when the branches are fully exposed. Quicker/easier/cheaper for "the man" to be able to see what he's doing and do the job safely. And less to cart away.

Davesnave

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'd get them cut into logs, then lay them in the corner of the garden, cover them in earth, stick some rocks on top and call it "the rockery".

Sycamore isn't the best quality firewood, but it's OK, once well-seasoned, so getting someone to take it should be no problem, The tree person(s) will probably know who, or sell it on themselves.

It's also good for making violins.

I_have_spoken

You could try your house insurer, they may see it's better to help with the felling now than be faced with big claims for damage and subsidence from the neighbours.

londonTiger

i wish people plan these things before buying a tree. One of my neighbours has a giant cherry tree in his garden. It's a terrqace in London with a tall windowless building at the foot of the garden so cutting the tree down after it stops producing fruit is going to be very expensive. It's absoluely giant.

They're in a much worse situation because there's no access to a cherry picker as the garden is surrounded by buildings.

At the moment nobody is saying anything because evertyone gets free cherries. But when the tree goes sterile - a lot of people will probably be humming and haa'ing about it as it's blocking the sun/preventing their tomatoes from getting sun etc.