Get help with that Gum Tree!

tree removal MelbourneI’ve seen a lot of things in my time as a home gardener. I’ve seen roses blooming in the dead of winter, all because a guy spent 14 hours a day in his greenhouse looking after them. I’ve seen a lady who let her garden grow so thick they had to call in an arborists to hack their way through with specialised equipment, only to find a wombat nest inside her shed. I’ve heard of a fellow who can rip up tree stumps with his bare hands and knock down old trees with a single blow.

All these years, and I can still be surprised. Now, I have plenty of arborists in Melbourne I can recommend if the situation is right. Sometimes things cross over from a gardener’s concern to that of a tree lopper, and often people simply can’t tell the difference. A tree will fall down in their garden, or they need some branches lopped off a huge oak tree, and then I have to explain to them that bulb planting and bonsai pruning are more my forte.

This time? I was called in because someone needed some pruning done. I get to the house, a huge place on the outskirts of the city, and they lead me right to the bottom of the garden, which took a fair while. The ‘pruning’ was that of a gum tree, fully-grown and with roots that were disturbing the local flower beds. I just had to look at the thing for a few moments to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Do people not understand how pervasive gumtree roots are, after all this time? That’s gardening 101: if there’s a gumtree messing up your flowerbed, you move the flowerbed. That’s about your only option, besides paying for tree removal people or just moving house because those things are tough.

More importantly, they’re not for me. Gardeners do not deal with the mother of all tree removal. Melbourne has professionals for this who will be happy to drive all that way for a job they can actually perform.