Tree surgeons in Penzance, Newlyn and West Penwith

We removed a large holm oak, Quercus ilex, in a Penzance garden this summer. Holm oak is an incredibly hard variety of oak that will often blunt a saw after several passes; its timber can be used for posts, planks and lintels but has to be managed carefully when drying as it tends to split and warp. This one had succumbed to honey fungus, Armillaria, a particularly aggressive pathogen with a high mortality rate. We had heavily pruned the tree some years ago to reduce its spread and the risk of limb failure over the two gardens it stood between. It rallied for a year, but the wet winter followed by the early drought left it with very poor new growth and the decision was taken to remove it completely.

Honey fungus spreads like a spider's web under the grass and will attack any woody plant, shrub or tree it reaches, often killing the host. Replanting a tree in that spot would almost certainly end the same way, so it has been left as a low stump for now, and the timber went for firewood because of the fungus. It is a good example of how we approach a tree: prune first, remove only when the tree has genuinely lost the fight, and be honest about what can go back.

Penzance's mild climate and the money of its Victorian merchants left it with Morrab Gardens, Penlee Park and a ring of villa gardens up Alexandra Road, along the Promenade and around Chyandour full of trees from warmer countries: Canary and Chusan palms, cordylines, tree ferns, magnolias, eucalyptus, Monterey pines and cypresses, and holm oaks like the one above. Many are now well past a century old and the gardens around them have been divided into flats. The work is reduction and dead wooding to keep them in proportion, and careful sectional removal where one has finally outgrown the plot or, as with the holm oak, been lost to disease. The town centre and the villa streets are a conservation area with many protected trees, so Cornwall Council's map is checked before any quote.

West of the town the fishing villages of Newlyn and Mousehole climb steep hillsides with gardens stacked above one another and reached by steps. Trees in them are mostly the salt hardy species that survive the south easterlies off Mount's Bay: evergreen oak, sycamore, escallonia grown into trees, and the odd huge Monterey pine above the harbour. Removals here are carry out jobs, cut small and taken down the steps, and nothing can be dropped anywhere. Along the coast road to Lamorna and the wooded valleys beyond, the trees are bigger and the gardens wilder, and storm damage after a south easterly is a regular call.

Beyond Penzance the land rises to the granite moors of West Penwith, and trees give out. What there is, around St Just, Pendeen, Zennor and the farms between, is shelter: sycamore and pine belts planted round farmyards and hamlets, thorn and willow in the valleys, and the odd relic of a Victorian plantation. Each is precious to the people living behind it, and each takes the full Atlantic. Reducing the sail of a belt that has started to fail, clearing the trees that have gone over, and replanting behind is the work out here, and it is done in winter when the ground is soft enough to plant and the birds are not nesting.

Because of the distance we group Penzance work and are straightforward about travel in the quote. For larger jobs the crane and lorry make the trip well worthwhile, and for smaller ones we try to combine visits. The free tree health check runs across TR18 to TR20 and we do quoting visits on the same days.