The Arbor Centre

Tree roots lifting a footpath or cracking open a car park cost local governments money every year, so we built Fortress5: an integrated root barrier service that keeps the tree and protects the pavement, cycle path, road, hardstand and buried utilities around it. The Arbor Centre is a family owned arboriculture business, founded by Rob Bodenstaff in 1985 and 40 years on still working out of Wattle Grove, for local government, developers, landscape architects, commercial and strata clients and residential customers across Perth.

The work that comes before any machine arrives is our consulting team's: tree surveying and profiling, condition and risk assessments, design and planning input on a development, retention strategies for the trees worth keeping, and plain advisory work when a decision has to be made. Our arborists hold Australian Qualification Framework certification from level 2 through to level 6, several with level 8 post graduate certification in arboriculture from Melbourne University, and the team is ISA certified and holds both QTRA and TRAQ tree risk qualifications.

Green surgery is what we call the pruning and maintenance, carried out by qualified arborists on everything from a carefully curated private garden to a civic avenue. Supply and plant goes a step further: we grow stock to order on our own tree farm, deliver it, plant it and then keep looking after it, and we are the only arboriculture business in WA that offers that as a warranty backed, integrated service. A watering and aftercare programme carries a new planting through its first summers, which is where most young trees are lost.

Tree relocation is a 25 year speciality here. We plan and facilitate the move, source and prepare the receiving site, sort the logistics including traffic management for oversize loads, manage the canopy and the root ball through the lift and the transport, then look after the tree once it is in the ground. If the destination site is not ready, we can hold the tree in temporary storage until it is. Difficult sites usually mean working in among other contractors, and that is normal for us.

Our clients across the Perth metropolitan area and Western Australia include Georgiou, Frasers Property, Downer, AECOM, Finbar, Built, Emerge Associates and the Town of Port Hedland, and a number of local governments now specify our root barrier system as their standard for managing tree roots in areas of high amenity use. We also run civic tree programmes that help councils reach their canopy coverage targets.

If you have a tree at home you are unsure about, the quote is free and an arborist will come and look at it. Ring the sales team on 08 9359 9300 or fill in the enquiry form and someone will get back to you.