Canopy Tree

When a council or a court needs a tree assessed by someone whose qualifications will hold up, that is the work Canopy Tree was built on. Nicholas Ford started the business in 1999, after a National Diploma of Forestry at Holm Lacy and a National Certificate in Arboriculture at Houghall College in the UK, and he brings more than 30 years in the industry to it. He holds an AQF Level 5 Diploma in Arboriculture, and we are members of Arboriculture Australia and the International Society of Arboriculture.

The reporting side covers arboricultural impact assessments for development applications, tree health and condition reports, tree surveys for planning and compliance, heritage tree assessments, tree risk and safety assessments, root investigations and mapping, pre-purchase tree inspections and giving evidence when a matter goes to court. Reports are written to AS4373-2007 for pruning and AS4970-2009 for protecting trees on development sites, so what lands on the planner's desk arrives in the form they are already expecting.

Project arborist oversight is the follow-through on that. Once consent has been granted, someone has to be on site confirming the tree protection measures drawn on the approved plan are actually in the ground and staying there while the build goes on, and that someone should be qualified to say so. We hold a National Licence to Perform High Risk Work, a boom over 11m ticket and a C6 slew crane licence, so the machinery side is covered too.

The climbing work runs alongside all of it. Tree removal, tree pruning and hedge trimming across the Southern Highlands, Wollondilly and the Wingecarribee, cut to AS4373 and never by topping, which takes years off a tree instead of tidying it. We are fully insured for public liability, workers compensation and professional indemnity, and the certificates are downloadable if you need them for a job file.

We also design and build tree houses. What the tree can carry, and how it will keep growing around a structure once that structure is fixed to it, is an arborist's question before it is a builder's, and we would rather answer it at the drawing stage than after the platform is up.

Our patch takes in Sydney and Greater Sydney, the Southern Highlands, Macarthur, Wollondilly and the Wingecarribee Shire, and we will travel further into regional NSW for report work. The office runs Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm. Ring 1300 799 540 or 0410 681 164 and tell us what you need looked at.