Tight access under Ashgrove's old timber houses

The suburb is the constraint

Ashgrove is one of Brisbane's classic pre-war suburbs, and it gave its name to a house type — the Ashgrovian, a large high-set timber Queenslander with a prominent gable, built through the 1920s and 30s. They sit high on narrow blocks that slope away from the street, with the yard behind and below, and a single narrow path down one side.

Everything about tree work here follows from that layout. There is no vehicle access to the back. A chipper sits on the street. Whatever is cut in the back yard gets lowered, cut small, and carried up through a gap that is frequently under a metre wide, past the tank, the air conditioner and the bins. On a decent-sized tree that is a day of work that a flat Sunnybank block would not require.

It is also why nobody can quote an Ashgrove tree over the phone honestly.

What is growing here

Jacarandas line a lot of the streets, and they are the suburb's signature in late October. They are also brittle, shallow-rooted and prone to dropping limbs, and the ones on the verge are council property.

Camphor laurel is everywhere through the gullies and along Enoggera Creek. Big, fast, weedy and root-aggressive, and on a narrow block it is almost always a removal once it starts lifting paths or shading a whole yard.

Then poinciana and mango in back yards, both routinely too large for the space and both good candidates for crown reduction rather than removal. Large figs on the older properties, usually with a root conflict somewhere. Leopard trees as street plantings. Hoop pines standing above the roof lines. And on the western edge toward The Gap, the native eucalypts start.

Enoggera Creek

The creek runs through the suburb, with council parkland, walking tracks and revegetation along much of it. Properties backing onto that corridor have two issues to settle before any work: where the boundary actually is, and whether the vegetation on the private side is protected. Both are common enough here that assuming otherwise is a poor bet — see the council rules page.

The creek line is also where the weed pressure comes from. Cat's claw creeper, privet and camphor seedlings move up into back yards continuously, and left alone the creeper will bring down a mature tree.

Storm exposure and old trees over old houses

The combination here is specific: very large mature trees standing over eighty and ninety-year-old timber houses with tin roofs. A limb that would dent a modern truss roof will go through one of these. Storms tracking down off the range through Ashgrove and The Gap are a known pattern, and the November 2008 event is still the local memory.

The cheap mitigation is deadwooding and thinning in winter. The expensive version is the emergency call-out in January. Prices and the access factors behind them are set out in the cost guide, and the wider northside picture is on the Brisbane northside page.