Ormeau Hills
Tree removal in Ormeau Hills
Removal, pruning and stump grinding for Ormeau Hills homes, from compact back yards to the blocks that back onto The Plateau Reserve.
Tree work in Ormeau Hills
Hardwood by the reserve, and lots with little room to spare
Inside The Plateau Reserve, the City's vegetation mapping shows spotted gum and ironbark woodland, along with broad-leaved white mahogany and Queensland stringybark forest and brush box over a rainforest understorey. Spotted gum, ironbark and stringybark all grow into tall, heavy hardwoods. When a big one stands near a house on the reserve's edge, often on sloping ground, it is taken down in sections on ropes rather than felled in one piece, and the job needs a chipper big enough for the timber.
Counting lots of 250 square metres or more, the City Plan's property boundary data gives Ormeau Hills a median lot of 503 square metres, smaller than in Ormeau, Kingsholme or Luscombe, the suburbs that border it. On a block that size there is seldom room for machinery behind the house. A back yard tree is usually reached along a narrow side path, the cut wood goes out by hand or is lifted over the roof, and the chipper works from the street.
In Carbeen Environmental Reserve the same mapping shows river red gum woodland, with or without river she-oak. Both grow on low, moist ground, which beside that reserve stays soft after rain, so trucks and grinders are kept off it until it firms up.
Services in Ormeau Hills
Heavy timber, side paths and stony ground
Tree removal
Heavy hardwoods leaning over a roof near the reserve, taken apart on ropes piece by piece.
Stump grinding
Stumps near the reserve worked down through thin soil, with time allowed if the grinder hits rock.
Tree pruning
Limbs over the roofline cut back on blocks that border the bushland, well before the fire season.
What it costs: tree removal cost, stump grinding cost, palm removal cost
Compared: removal, lopping or pruning, stump grinding or stump removal, council tree rules compared
How it works
Four steps, and the permit comes before the price
Nothing happens without a written quote you have agreed to.
- 1
Call or send the form
Include the suburb, your details and what needs to be done.
- 2
A contractor comes to see it
On site, not off a photo, because access and what sits underneath change the job.
- 3
The permit position is checked
Against the city's vegetation mapping and the koala controls, before a price is given.
- 4
Quoted in writing
The quote sets out the scope, the timber, the stump and the date. Then a date is booked.
Ormeau Hills questions
Verge water gums, the fire overlay and rock below
Who trims the water gums out on the verge?
Mostly the City. Its Urban Forest tree records, last updated in 2021, hold 298 water gums inside Ormeau Hills, the most of any named tree there, and almost all of them are street trees. One hanging over a roof, gutter or driveway is usually the City's tree, so the request goes to the City, while a water gum or lilly pilly inside the fence line is the owner's to look after.
What does the fire overlay show for The Plateau Reserve?
The City Plan's bushfire hazard area overlay shows The Plateau Reserve as Very High Potential Bushfire Intensity in places, its top class, and as High, Medium or Potential Impact Buffer elsewhere. For a house that backs onto it, the work to book ahead of each fire season is on the private side: limbs cut back from the roofline and gutters, the lowest branches taken off, and shrubs kept from crowding the walls. The reserve is council land, and its trees are not the owner's to cut.
Why can a stump near the reserve take longer to grind?
Because of what lies under it. The City's soil association map shows tenosols that overlie hard unweathered rock beneath The Plateau Reserve, and where that ground carries on under a yard, a grinder can strike stone a short way down, which slows the work and wears the teeth. Thin soil over rock also leaves a tree with a wide, flat root plate that a strong wind can lever out of the ground.
