Gibbs & Haynes Gallery
Tree surgery is the method of creating and maintaining beautiful trees. If you plant a tree, that tree will want to grow in a way that maximises it's sun light intake as well as it's water intake.
This means growing tall and growing wide
Once a tree starts to do this it can and will block out light, damage underground piping, intrude on your homes natural light source, cause paving problems and much more. Once this happens it can be a costly and chaotic thing to rectify.
Prevention by care is the best way to help keep your home and garden in good repair. Things such as crowning, thinning, reducing leaf output and removing dead or damaged branches are vital in this role.
So you can get a fair understanding of what we do and where we might be able to help you and your garden we have compiled a gallery of images to show previous work and techniques.
Each image has a brief description of what and why we do what we do.
Safety procedures when working over roadway.
Crown reduction and thinning of oak next to building.
Illustration of fall arrest system i.e.harness and rope attachment.
Reduction of a long limb back to a suitable side branch which visually and physically assumes the role of the leader.
Sycamore which has been sensitively thinned and reduced.
Mature sycamore adjacent to building, which has been carefully reduced and thinned to allow more light to garden and house,
Muswell Hill. 30 metre high ash tree, overhanging school buildings, where the heavy lateral limbs have been reduced in order to minimise the risk of breakage.
Crouch End. Mature sycamore, in a modest sized garden, pruned on a 3 year cycle to reduce subsidence risk and allow light to the garden.
Crouch End. Contrast the careful pruning on the left with the brutal pollard style of the two neighbouring trees. This shows that overpruning is self-defeating and spoils the shape of the tree.
Highgate. Careless garden fires scorched the bark, allowing fungus to decay the trunk. The tree subsequently fell onto a neighbour's garden, demolishing a wall and outbuilding.
Crouch End. Weeping willow pruned regularly to limit its potential size , while retaining its grace and beauty.
Hampstead. Hickory before pruning. This tree was virtually destroyed in the 1987 storm. Our nurturing has restored its symmetry.
Hampstead. Hickory after crown reduction and thinning.
Hampstead. Illustration of safety harness/fall arrest system.
Hadley Wood. The same tree showing clearance from the buildings. We have maintained this tree for the past 20 years.
Hadley Wood. Copper beech, next to two period houses, after crown reduction and thinning.
Tufnell Park. Two lime trees reduced and thinned in scale with the house and garden.
Tufnell Park. Contrast these lime trees which are clearly overdue for pruning.
Mill Hill. Elm bark beetle galleries. The beetles transmit the disease from one elm to another.
Mill Hill. Woodpecker holes in a dead beech tree, sited in a small woodland which we manage for conservation and biodiversity.