Tree surgeons in Dudley, Stourbridge & Kingswinford

The DY postcodes run downhill from the limestone ridge at Dudley and Sedgley to the Stour valley at Stourbridge, and the gardens change as you go. Dudley, Netherton and Brierley Hill are terraces and post-war estates reached through an entry; Kingswinford, Wordsley and Wall Heath are interwar semis with long rear plots; Stourbridge, Oldswinford, Norton and Pedmore have Victorian villas with the original planting still in them, much of it now over 20 metres tall.

The councils change too, and not where people expect. DY1, DY2 and DY5 are entirely Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, and DY6 is almost all Dudley. DY3 is Dudley for Sedgley and Gornal, South Staffordshire for Himley and part of Wombourne. DY4 Tipton is split with Sandwell, and DY7 is mostly South Staffordshire: Kinver and Stourton. DY8 is Dudley for Stourbridge, Wollaston, Norton and Amblecote, with edges in South Staffordshire and Bromsgrove. DY9 is Dudley for Lye, Wollescote and Pedmore, and Bromsgrove district, Worcestershire, for Hagley, Clent and Belbroughton.

Branch and Bramble does not carry out any work. We pass your enquiry to one local specialist covering this patch, who agrees a fixed price with you directly.

Tree Preservation Orders and conservation areas

Dudley has 22 conservation areas, listed on the council's conservation areas page. Inside the DY postcodes they are Castle Hill, Dudley Town Centre, Parkhead Locks, Bumble Hole and All Saints Sedgley; Brierley Hill High Street, Delph 'Nine' Locks and The Village, Kingswinford; Wordsley Church, Wordsley Hospital and Stourbridge Sixteen Locks; and, in Stourbridge, High Street, Church Road and Love Lane at Oldswinford, Wollaston, and the two Stourbridge Branch Canal areas. Nothing covers Pedmore or Norton, so a big tree there is protected only if it carries its own Order.

You must give six weeks' written notice before work on a conservation area tree whose trunk is more than 75mm across at 1.5m above the ground. The limit rises to 100mm only when you cut trees down to help others grow, not for crown thinning. Dead, dying and dangerous trees are exempt, but a replacement is expected: see the council's page and our guide to trees in conservation areas.

Dudley publishes TPOs online. Open the council's map, search your address, choose the Development Control category and tick TPO. The council warns the layer is not formal confirmation, so ring the Tree Protection Officer if the answer matters. Applications to work on a TPO tree are decided within eight weeks. See how to check if a tree has a TPO.

Three of the 22 carry Article 4 Directions — Mushroom Green, The Leasowes and Love Lane, Oldswinford — of which only Love Lane is in this patch. That controls buildings and paving rather than trees, but it matters if a clearance ends with a new shed or hard surface. In Kinver and Himley the authority is South Staffordshire, in Hagley and Clent it is Bromsgrove, and on the Sandwell side of DY4 it is Sandwell.

The local landscape

Dudley, Sedgley, Gornal and Netherton sit on the Silurian limestone ridge quarried and mined through the Industrial Revolution. Wren's Nest was worked by pillar-and-stall mining and the roof of the Seven Sisters caverns collapsed as recently as 2001, so old workings are worth flagging before anything involving digging or a heavy machine. Gardens here are small and walled, often reached only by a shared entry, so every branch comes out by hand.

Stourbridge, Oldswinford, Wollaston, Norton and Pedmore are the big-garden end, where the villas came with limes, horse chestnuts, beech, yew and the occasional cedar, planted in the 1880s and now above the roofline. The recurring problems are lime with heavy epicormic growth and honeydew dripping onto parked cars, horse chestnut with leaf miner and bleeding canker, and badly topped beech.

Kingswinford, Wall Heath and Wordsley run to 20 or 30 metre rear gardens with a great many 1970s Leylandii and laurel screens, now past useful. Lye, Quarry Bank and Brierley Hill back onto former works sites, canal arms and railway land, where sycamore, birch, buddleia and bramble seed fast into made ground, and ash dieback shows along the canal banks.

Tree work in Dudley & Stourbridge

Two very different jobs dominate. In Stourbridge, Oldswinford, Norton and Pedmore it is the large Victorian specimen: a lime or horse chestnut 20 metres up, over a conservatory, a neighbour's roof or a road. These come down in sections with rigging, and for a healthy tree a crown reduction is often better than removal — see the cost guide. Removals start from £280, with anything over 15 metres priced after a survey.

In Dudley, Netherton and Brierley Hill the constraint is access. No rear gate and a shared entry mean tree felling in the ordinary sense is rarely possible, and the cost reflects how far the timber is carried. If your garden sits over old workings, say so before anyone brings a stump grinder in. Leylandii rows are hedge reduction or hedge removal work; our Leylandii guide covers the choice.

Each enquiry goes to one tree surgeon whose insurance and NPTC chainsaw certificates we have checked. See the Dudley and Stourbridge tree surgery page or all tree surgery services.