Tree surgeons in Redruth and the villages under Carn Brea

Two hundred years ago the country around Redruth had hardly a tree on it; the mines burnt everything. What grows there now is what came back on its own once the engine houses fell silent: sycamore, willow, birch, gorse and rhododendron colonising the spoil heaps, the mine dumps and the abandoned dressing floors around Carn Brea, Wheal Peevor, Poldice and the Great Flat Lode. Much of it is now woodland in all but name, and it is within the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, so clearing it is not always as simple as it looks.

Trees on spoil have shallow, one sided roots in loose ground, and they blow over more readily than trees in a field. Old shafts, some capped and some not, are another reason we walk every site here before we drive a digger onto it.

Redruth is built on the slopes under Carn Brea, and the south westerlies come over the top and down onto the town with some force. The mature beeches, limes and sycamores planted around the Victorian villas on Clinton Road, Falmouth Road and the streets up towards the station take the brunt, and after every big storm we have a run of calls from that side of the town about limbs down and crowns split. Dead wooding and reducing the sail of these big trees before the winter is the sensible answer, and it is cheaper than the clean up afterwards.

The old town is terraced, tight and steep, with the same problems Truro has: no rear access, trees planted small a century ago in gardens far too small for them now, and a conservation area covering the centre and Fore Street. Around it the housing is later and easier, from the council built semis at Trewirgie and North Country to the estates on the road out to Illogan and towards Pool, where the trees are mostly the fast growing species planted with the houses and now too big for the plots. Leylandii screens that have got to fifteen metres are a common Redruth call, and so are the flowering cherries lifting the paths.

Between Redruth and our yard the A393 runs through Lanner, and the lanes off it lead to St Day, Carharrack, Gwennap and the wooded valleys running down towards Devoran. This is smallholding and old chapel country, with hedge banks full of oak and ash, the odd Victorian plantation of beech and pine, and a great deal of self sown woodland in the old mine valleys. Windblown trees across lanes and tracks, ash dieback in the hedgerows, and hedge and boundary work for the small farms make up most of our winter work here, and it is close enough that a half day job is worth the trip.

Redruth's main roads and estates are fine for the lorry and the crane, and the crane is often the answer for a big villa tree over a road. The lanes around St Day and Gwennap are another matter, narrow and sunk between banks, and for those we plan the vehicles carefully and sometimes use the smaller crane or the digger rather than the lorry. We look at every job first, and the free tree health check applies across TR15 and TR16.