We have been busy over the last few weeks with our long standing contract with the National Trust. It is necessary work to improve the health of the woodland but it is difficult to photograph. Today we conducted some work where we were able to get before and after photos.

We were working in the grounds of a nursery school located in a conservation area in Shrewsbury. The local authority had granted permission to conduct work on a number of trees. The picture below shows the site when we arrived, the the large softwood (centre of the picture) needed to be removed and the pine tree behind had a large limb, about 30cm (1 foot) in diameter, that had split and collapsed which needed to be removed for safety. To remove the limb, which protruded over a fence and a wall, the tree was climbed and the limb was removed in small handheld sections. The last few sections were lowered safely to the ground using lowering ropes.

The cherry tree on the left of the picture (white blossom) was well over 40 years old. Unfortunately it was dying and had a large amount of decay at the base of the trunk. The decay continued up one side of the trunk and into the crown of the tree. The tree was felled at ground level and then processed for firewood.

We also removed a tree which had been infected by fungi and the tree had died some time ago (located just to the left of the photo). Its limbs had grown in and around the neighbouring softwoods. This was tricky to remove but was done so in small sections by climbing the neighbouring trees and cutting the dead limbs into small sections. The roots were decayed to such a great extent we were able to remove the two foot wide stump by hand.

All this work left a great deal of mess to be cleared. The smaller branches were passed through the chipper and removed from site. As the ‘after’ picture shows, we collected the sawdust and tidied the site before leaving the site for the day. Most of the logs were removed today and the logs in the picture have been left to be collected tomorrow when we will conduct a final clean up.