Tree surgeons in St Columb Major and the Vale of Lanherne

St Columb Major was once the largest town in this part of Cornwall, and its church, its slate hung houses and its narrow streets on the hilltop are a conservation area. Gardens are small and the trees in them are the usual mix of sycamore, ash and the odd overgrown conifer in a plot too small for it, with tight access and the parking of a working market town. The estates round the edge, out towards the bypass and the rugby club, have the sixties and seventies planting that is now oversized everywhere: cherries, whitebeams, poplars and leylandii, and the reductions, removals and stump grinding that follow.

Below the town the River Menalhyl runs west through the Vale of Lanherne to St Mawgan and the sea at Mawgan Porth, and the valley is one of the best treed on the north coast: oak, ash, beech and sweet chestnut on the slopes, willow and alder along the river, and the parkland of Lanherne and the older houses in the village. Ash dieback is thinning the ash here as it is everywhere, and the big beeches along the lanes are old enough to be dropping limbs. Storm damage in the valley, dead ash over the road and the footpaths, and reductions of the parkland trees are the work, and the valley lane is narrow enough that the vehicles are planned job by job.

The plateau around the town, towards Indian Queens, Winnards Perch, Talskiddy and Newquay Airport, is big farm country, open to the wind and planted for shelter. Belts of sycamore, beech and Monterey pine around the farmyards are now a century old and coming to the end of their lives one tree at a time, and reducing what remains, clearing the fallen ones off tracks and fields and replanting behind is a regular winter job. Cornish hedges are thick with thorn and gorse and need cutting and laying, and the woodland blocks on the bigger farms need thinning and the windblown trees dealt with. The lorry, the digger and the crane make this kind of farm work far quicker than it used to be.

East of the town the ground runs towards the Camel valley and the woods around Ruthernbridge and Withiel, at the very edge of the TR postcodes. Woodland management, thinning, extraction and storm clearance for the estates and smallholdings there is work we take on where the scale justifies the journey, and the free tree health check runs across TR9.

St Columb Major is at the edge of the TR area and we are honest about travel in the quote. Larger farm and woodland jobs, crane removals and storm clearance are well worth the drive; for small jobs we try to group visits with Newquay and the north coast.