Help & Advice

What is Arboriculture?

Arboriculture is the management of trees in the urban environment, around people and their property.

It is falsely believed that trees require regular ‘managing’ to keep them ‘safe’ and ‘healthy’. Trees ideally like to be left alone, they can usually look after themselves much better than we can. When other external forces act upon a tree such as animal damage, human damage, weather, climate change or pest/fungi attack, trees can become stressed, strained and fail is certain ways. Where this could have the potential to happen around people and property, this is where we come in as arborists to help manage this situation.

A Duty of Care

Everyone at Finch are passionate about trees and we are always here to give you advice and help where required. This can be given over the phone for simple issues or by email for more complicated ones. In many cases a quick consultation visit by one of our senior arborists is all that you require, removing the worry or preventing costly works.

As a property owner or agent you have a ‘Duty of Care’ to your neighbours and any one or thing that resides or visits your property. This means that you may be liable if someone or their property was to cause damage or injury. The law requires you to take ‘reasonable’ steps to ensure this does not happen. You can cover yourself by employing Finch to take on this responsibly, which is best served by one of our Tree Condition surveys. This is backed by our experience, qualifications and robust insurance package.

What time of year?

The field of arboriculture is relatively new professional field and is not widely understood or fully developed yet. Our industry is probably born out for the Horticultural sector where the care of plants and gardens is a very old profession. How our profession differs from gardening as it is the primary care of woody structures which differ from the majority of green stemmed plants. Woody structures require a different set of management, understanding and tool set.

It is widely believed that all tree works should all be done in the winter in the UK, when the trees are more dormant. This is not entirely true but has probably been brought from the horticultural sector then gardeners needed something ‘to do’ in the winter!

• For pruning trees this should ideally be done from late spring to mid summer as the trees can actively work on the wound ‘healing’ process (think of human scabs!), there is less fungal spores about and we can limit adverse new growth from the tree.

• For removing trees, this can be done year round as required. Wildlife checks will have to undertaken at various points in the year more than others but trees usually have limited bird and bat roosting potential over other features.

• For tree planting and relocation, this should mainly be done between November and February to provide better success as trees are not actively up taking as much water and nutrients, thus the root system will cope better this the planting shock.

• For trimming hedges, this is best done in the summer or autumn months where there will be limited new growth giving a longer looking trimmed hedge and the risk of nesting birds is less.

• For removing hedges, this is best done in the winter months or between October and February when bird nesting potential is at its lowest. Hedge removal and some evergreen tree removal should be AVOIDED in the spring as these features are prime habitats for birds.

What to Expect

For a lot of our new clients, you may never have had a tree care company at your property before, or potentially you may have had bad experiences from works in the past.

We aim to be the best tree care company you can work with. We have been established for many years and all we do is tree care, meaning we are in business for the long term and specialists in our profession.

• We have full time office staff to handle your enquiries, queries and questions, through phone, email, text or social media. We aim to keep you informed throughout the work process and provide you with any answers to your questions.

• We hold leading industry accreditations and certifications meaning we are one of the most qualified companies in the country and undergo routine inspections of our work and systems.

• All of our staff arrive with company uniform from site consultations to site works. We can produce identification and copies of all of our company documents as required.

• Our staff are full time employees which are picked for their trustworthiness, attitude and enthusiasm. We pay them above average rates and invest in them to become more valuable team members.

• We use clean, modern and well maintained equipment that help prevents unwanted spillages, breakdowns and improve safety.

• We undertake comprehensive onsite risk assessments and method statements for all of our jobs, which is recorded on our state of the art digital software system, allowing us to operate paperless and provide our clients with before and after pictures, risk assessment copies and completion forms.