Taking the dead wood out, safer tree, healthier tree.

Why deadwood

• Falling risk. Dead branches shed on their own; the only question is whether they land on a path, a car, a shed roof, or a person. Big garden limes and sycamores in Canterbury are the usual culprits, a 4-metre dead limb at 8 metres up is a serious impact if it drops.
• Disease pathway. Dead wood in the canopy is an entry point for fungi and pathogens back into the live tree. Removing dead limbs promptly closes those pathways.
• Insurance. Most household insurers expect reasonable arboricultural maintenance of trees overhanging property. Documented deadwooding is what "reasonable" looks like.

What we don't take

We deadwood conservatively. Small dead twigs deep in the interior of the canopy that pose no fall risk are habitat for insects, fungi, hole-nesting birds and (on the Blean edge) bats. Those stay. What comes off is the material that has real weight, real height, or real disease propagation, nothing else. If a customer wants an over-aggressive clean-out, we push back; that's not deadwooding, that's aesthetic thinning, and there's a name for the honest version of that: crown thinning.

Frequency

Most mature garden trees in Canterbury do well with a deadwood on a 2–4 year cycle. Species that shed heavily (lime, sycamore, London plane) at the tighter end; slower species (oak, yew, hornbeam) at the wider end.

Special case: ash dieback (Chalara fraxinea)

Ash dieback is widespread across Kent, including in the Blean and along the Stour. An ash tree with dieback needs an honest assessment before any work, brittle wood, unpredictable failure points, and no benefit to the tree from repeated deadwooding once dieback is beyond a certain stage. In many advanced cases the correct call is a controlled fell rather than a deadwood. We flag it, we don't hide it.

Pricing

Single-tree deadwood in Canterbury typically runs £180 – £550. Combined with an annual or two-yearly hedge cut at the same address, we discount 10% off the deadwooding side, the vehicle is already there. Fixed price after seeing photos.

Before we cut

Deadwooding is exempt from section-211 notice on strict reading, dead wood is not "healthy tree material", but we still check for TPOs and inform Canterbury City Council in the CA notice as a courtesy, and we photograph before-and-after for insurance evidence.