Palms Are a Different Job From Trees
Auckland gardens are full of palms that are now far taller than whoever planted them expected - Washingtonia robusta in particular keeps going well past the height of a two-storey house. We have been taking them out for our customers for years, from a single fan palm by a boundary fence to a garden full of very large palms in one job.
A palm is not built like a tree, and that changes how it comes down. There are no branches to rope from and no side limbs to lower in pieces: just a head of heavy fronds and seed stalks at the top of a long, fibrous trunk that can be surprisingly heavy and does not break like wood. Phoenix palms add long, needle-sharp spines at the base of every frond.
How We Take a Palm Down
From the top
An arborist climbs the trunk, takes off the fronds and seed heads first, and then the trunk comes down in lengths - dropped into a clear space where there is one, or lowered where there is not.
Beside the house, the road or the lines
Where there is nowhere safe to drop anything - a palm hard up against the house, leaning over the road or growing between power lines - the lengths of trunk can be lifted out by a crane truck instead, so nothing lands where it should not. The photographs on this page are jobs like that. Tell us about any power lines near the palm when you enquire, as the lines company may need to be involved first.
The fronds, the trunk and the base
Palm fronds are tough and fibrous, and they are chipped or loaded out along with the trunk sections. A palm does not regrow from its stump, but the base is a lump in the lawn or garden until it is gone, so most customers have it ground out at the same time - see stump grinding.
Palms We Remove
- Washingtonia (Mexican fan palm) - the very tall, skinny palms, often with a skirt of dead fronds.
- Fan palms - including the rows of tall fan palms planted along drives and boundaries.
- Windmill palms - smaller, with a hairy trunk, but often squeezed in beside a house or deck.
- Phoenix palms - heavy heads and sharp spines, where the clean-up matters as much as the felling.
Removing a palm, or keeping it?
If the palm is healthy and you like it, it may not need to go. If it is dropping fronds on the roof, lifting paving, blocking a view or simply too tall for the section, removal is usually the cleaner long-term answer. We will give you a straight view when we come to quote.
