Sentinel Tree Care

Putting false hollows back into a landscape is the part of our work people tend to remember. Where the old trees that once held hollows have gone, we build and install nest boxes and then keep monitoring them, and we have seen wildlife move in within three months of a box going up. The boxes go up for private landholders, commercial sites and landcare groups right across the Northern Rivers, and what moves into them is owls and owlet nightjars, rosellas and galahs, possums, sugar gliders and antechinus. Our wildlife and habitat creation work is the piece our crew find genuinely exciting, and the landholders who take it on tell us they find it rewarding.

Established in 2011, Sentinel Tree Care is run by our director Nicholas Sanderson out of the Byron Bay shire. We work to AS 4373-2007, the Australian Standard for the pruning of amenity trees, and we are members of Arboriculture Australia and the Queensland Arboricultural Association. We carry 10 million dollars of public liability cover, with employees, contractors, equipment and vehicles insured and maintained, and we work through Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Federal, Ballina and Lismore as well as Byron itself.

Thinning, pruning and dead wooding is where that standard earns its keep. Cuts get decided by what the tree needs to stay sound, which is what leaves you with a canopy still shading the house in twenty years and no limb over the roof you have to think about in a storm. We take on tree removal where a tree is past keeping, and the ones we get asked about are usually the awkward ones: over a deck, beside a pool, in ground too tight to drop anything into, where the tree comes out in pieces that never swing near the glass.

The other half of what we do is broader. Vegetation management takes in utility management, roadside corridor widening and rural property maintenance out on acreage. After a blow we handle the storm damage remediation, from clearing a fallen tree to making a damaged one safe where it stands. We do a steady trade in cleaning and removal of palms along this coast, and wood chipping and stump grinding tidy up whatever a job leaves behind.

Lighting a mature tree properly is an unusual line for a tree company and one of our favourites. Our tree lighting design treats a big tree as the best thing in the garden and gives you a reason to look at it after dark. If you have a tree you are unsure about, ring Nick on 0421 435 620 or send us an email. We will come out and look at it, and where it can be kept we will tell you exactly what it needs to stay that way.