Tree surgeons in Newquay and the Gannel villages

Newquay faces the open Atlantic and gets it full in the face. The headlands and the cliff top streets around Fistral, Pentire, Towan and Lusty Glaze have almost no trees because almost nothing will stand, and the ones that do, sycamore, evergreen oak, tamarisk and the toughest pines, are wind pruned into shapes that lean away from the sea. The gardens a few streets back, around Trenance, Mount Wise and the older villas towards St Columb Minor, are where the town's real trees are: Victorian and Edwardian planting of pines, cypresses and sycamores now well over a century old, big and exposed, and shedding in every winter gale.

Trenance Gardens, the boating lake and the valley running inland from them are the green heart of the town, and the wooded valleys behind, the Gannel with its creeks, the Porth valley and the ground rising to Trevemper and Lane, are surprisingly well treed for the north coast: oak, ash, sycamore and willow in the sheltered bottoms, with ash dieback now working through them. Dead ash over the paths, the campsites and the lanes is a growing part of our Newquay work, and because dead ash is dangerous to climb it is often a crane or platform job.

Newquay is the busiest resort in Cornwall, and its holiday parks, hotels, surf lodges and lets have trees they need to be sure of before every season. We work with park and hotel managers in the closed months on safety inspections, reductions and removals, and turn out for storm damage during the season when we must. The free tree health check is a cheap way for a site manager to know where they stand before the guests arrive. In July and August the town is best avoided with an 18 tonne lorry, so planned work is timed for autumn to spring.

Newquay has grown faster than almost anywhere in Cornwall, with large new estates at Nansledan, Treloggan, Tretherras and out towards the airport at St Mawgan. New estate planting needs formative pruning in its first decade to avoid becoming a removal job in its third, and the older estates from the sixties and seventies are already at that stage, with leylandii screens and overgrown cherries and whitebeams over drives and paths. Around the airport and the old RAF station the shelter belts of pine and sycamore are big, old and failing one tree at a time.

South of the Gannel the villages of Crantock, Cubert and Holywell are dune and farmland country, with pines on sand and the same anchorage problems Hayle has, and the wooded creek sides of the Gannel itself, where willow and oak lean out over the tide. North of the town, Porth, St Columb Minor and Watergate Bay have the coast's mix of wind shaped garden trees and sheltered valley woods. We group north coast work so that a Newquay day covers the villages as well.