Arborology WA

Thirty six to forty eight hours is what normally sits between the site inspection and the report landing in your inbox, which matters when a development application is waiting on it. Arborology WA is a family owned consultancy run by Phil Matthews, Principal Arboricultural Consultant, who has spent more than 30 years in arboriculture and horticulture in Perth and holds an AQF Level 5 Diploma in Horticulture (Arboriculture) along with QTRA Tree Risk Assessment licence number 2726. John Matthews looks after administration. The business has roots in the Wiradjuri people of Mudgee, New South Wales.

We do not cut trees. Being independent of any party who might have an interest in your tree is the basis the whole practice sits on, and it is what makes an independent arboricultural report worth commissioning in the first place. What you get is an assessment of the tree and nothing riding on the answer.

For development sites we write preliminary arboricultural reports before a DA goes in and arboricultural impact reports for the application itself, both to AS 4970 (2025). Where a council wants replacement planting shown, we prepare new tree planting reports and one page landscape tree planting plans to go with them. Once machinery is on site we provide compliance reports and act as project arborist, so the tree protection conditions written into the approval are the ones actually followed. The Planning and Development Act 2005 and its regulations sit behind all of it.

QTRA tree risk assessments put a figure on what a tree genuinely threatens, weighing the target underneath it, the size of the part that might fail and how likely that failure is. Schools and colleges use the same method across a whole site in a campus tree audit. We also handle arboricultural forensic investigations, including glyphosate poisoning cases, neighbourhood tree disputes, tree valuation reports under the Helliwell System, pre purchase tree reports for anyone buying a property with a significant tree on it, vegetation control agreements for Western Power lines, and tree surveys that set out remedial pruning works. Soil testing, root disturbance assessment and decay diagnosis come into it when the cause of a tree's decline is not obvious from the ground.

We work across the Perth metropolitan area and out into regional Western Australia. If you only need an answer rather than a document, we give verbal tree advice as well, which is often enough to settle whether a written report is needed at all. Ring Phil on the mobile or send us an email with the address and a photo of the tree, and we will tell you what the job calls for and how soon we can have it back to you.