Arboreport

Barangaroo South, the Parramatta Light Rail corridor, the central courtyard at Macquarie University and the heritage precinct at Royal Military College Duntroon have all had Arboreport arborists on them. The practice was established in 2005 as part of the AEON Group, which Director Adrian Swain set up in 2003, and between us the team has more than 100 years across landscape horticulture and arboriculture. We assess, report and advise on tree risk, tree management and trees on development sites.

Adrian is an AQF Level 5 Consulting Arborist, a Registered Landscape Architect, and a Fellow and past National President of the Landscape Design Institute. He gives evidence in court on development impacts to existing trees, usually acting for local government on peer review, and runs CPD seminars for architects, planners, builders and engineers on AS 4970 (2009) Protection of Trees on Development Sites. Our Team Leader Dennis Marsden has 40 years in the industry, 28 of them as an arboricultural consultant, having started at Civic Trees in the early 1990s and run his own consultancy from 1999. Alongside them the practice runs AQF Level 5 and AQF Level 8 arboriculturists, and we are members of the Institute of Australian Consulting Arboriculturists, the International Society of Arboriculture, the Australian Institute of Horticulture and the Landscape Design Institute.

On development sites we prepare arboricultural impact assessments, tree protection plans and methods statements, then stay on as project arborist to supervise works happening close to trees through the construction period. Where a matter ends up in front of a court or a panel, we act as expert witness on arboricultural questions. Tree transplant management, which is what carried the Pavilions and Roden Cutler Lodge projects, sits in the same part of the practice.

For existing tree populations we run tree audits and tree inventories and tree risk assessments using both QTRA and TRAQ. Where a tree looks suspect and a decision has to be defensible, resistograph testing measures internal decay and the fractometer tests the load bearing properties of the wood itself, so the recommendation rests on readings rather than on an opinion from the ground. We also write amenity, heritage and environmental tree management plans, work that has taken six national AILDM awards since 2010, including the 2019 Allan Correy Award for Design Excellence and gold for management planning the same year.

The studio is at Castle Hill in Sydney's north west, and the work runs across greater Sydney and out into regional New South Wales, from North Sydney, Cronulla, Cremorne and The Rocks to Ourimbah, Bonny Hills and Canberra. Tell us what the site is and what stage it is at, and we will tell you which report you actually need. Call (02) 9680 7713 or send the project brief through and we will come back to you.