Taking the dead wood out: safer tree, healthier tree.

Why deadwood

• Falling risk. Dead branches shed on their own; the only question is whether they land on a path, a car, a shed roof or a person. Big garden limes and sycamores across Dover's older streets are the usual culprits: a 4-metre dead limb at 8 metres up is a serious impact if it drops. Add in the winter easterlies and the risk is not theoretical.
• Disease pathway. Dead wood in the canopy is an entry point for fungi and pathogens back into the live tree. Removing dead limbs promptly closes those pathways.
• Insurance. Most household insurers expect reasonable arboricultural maintenance of trees overhanging property. Documented deadwooding is what "reasonable" looks like.

Ash dieback: the East Kent priority

Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, formerly Chalara) is now advanced across the Dover district. It moved through East Kent's woodland and roadside ash hard between 2018 and 2024, and most ash in the Alkham valley, Kearsney, Temple Ewell and along the cliff-top back-lanes are showing some stage of decline. For ash, deadwooding is not a maintenance ask: it's a triage decision. An early-stage tree can be deadwooded and kept for years; a mid-stage tree usually needs a bigger intervention; a late-stage tree needs a controlled fell because the wood is now too brittle to climb safely. We do the assessment on every ash we look at, and we tell you where it sits on the cycle before we book any work.

What we don't take

We deadwood conservatively. Small dead twigs deep in the interior of the canopy that pose no fall risk are habitat for insects, fungi and hole-nesting birds. Those stay. What comes off is the material that has real weight, real height, or real disease propagation: nothing else. If a customer wants an over-aggressive clean-out, we push back; that's not deadwooding, that's aesthetic thinning, and there's a name for the honest version of that: crown thinning.

Frequency

Most mature garden trees in Dover do well with a deadwood on a 2–4 year cycle. Species that shed heavily (lime, sycamore, London plane) at the tighter end; slower species (oak, yew, hornbeam, holm oak) at the wider end. Ash on its own cycle: annual assessment while dieback is progressing.

Pricing

Single-tree deadwood in Dover typically runs £180 – £550. Combined with an annual or two-yearly hedge cut at the same address, we discount 10% off the deadwooding side: the vehicle is already there. Fixed price after seeing photos.

Before we cut

Deadwooding is exempt from section-211 notice on strict reading (dead wood is not "healthy tree material"), but we still check for TPOs and inform Dover District Council in the CA notice as a courtesy, and we photograph before-and-after for insurance evidence. On any ash we assess for dieback first and quote from there.