Tree surgeons in Lichfield & Tamworth

Two towns eight miles apart with almost nothing in common as garden jobs. Lichfield is a small Georgian cathedral city with a tight historic core, walled town gardens and a ring of 1980s to 2000s estates. Tamworth nearly doubled in size between 1961 and 2001 as Birmingham's most successful overspill town, and most of its housing is 1960s and 1970s estates with modest plots and trees planted all at once when the estates went up. Those trees are fifty years old now, which is why the work here is mostly reduction and removal.

The council map is untidy. WS13 and WS14 are Lichfield District Council. B77 is Tamworth Borough with a North Warwickshire edge, and B79 is mostly Tamworth Borough with parts in Lichfield District, North Warwickshire and North West Leicestershire. B78 is the awkward one: Fazeley, Bonehill, Hopwas and Drayton Bassett are Lichfield District, while Dordon, Piccadilly and Wood End are North Warwickshire.

Branch and Bramble does not do the work. We pass your enquiry to one local specialist covering this patch, and they agree a fixed price with you.

Tree Preservation Orders and conservation areas

Lichfield District has 22 conservation areas and more than 490 Tree Preservation Orders in force, some covering a single tree and some whole woodlands. The ones in these postcodes are Lichfield – City, Whittington, Shenstone, Wall, Hopwas, Fazeley and Bonehill, Drayton Bassett, Wigginton, Harlaston, Hints and Elford (council list). Three carry Article 4 Directions: Lichfield City, Whittington and Wigginton. It is also the easiest council here to check, because its ezyPortal protected tree map searches by address, shows TPOs in red and conservation areas in brown, and lets you download the Order as a PDF for nothing.

Tamworth Borough has seven conservation areas: Tamworth Town, Albert Road / Victoria Street, Hospital Street, Amington Green, Amington Hall Estate, Wilnecote and Dosthill (council page). All but the last two have Article 4 Directions. The borough administers around 70 TPOs, the oldest from 1965, and publishes them as a written Tree Preservation Order list rather than a map, so look up the road name and ring planning on 01827 709709 if it is not clear. Consent applications take six to eight weeks.

In any conservation area, a tree with a trunk more than 75mm across measured 1.5m above the ground is automatically protected, and you must give six weeks' written notice — a section 211 notice — before pruning or felling it. See trees in conservation areas and how to check if a tree has a TPO. On the Warwickshire side of B78 and B79 that notice goes to North Warwickshire.

The local landscape

Lichfield city centre is hard to get equipment into: Georgian and Victorian houses with walled rear gardens and narrow shared entries, where the big trees — the limes and planes around Minster Pool, Stowe Pool and Beacon Park — belong to the council, not the householders looking at them. Work here is usually one sycamore or ash that has outgrown a 10 metre plot. Streethay, Boley Park and Darwin Park are 1980s to 2000s estates with smaller gardens: birch, rowan, cherry and a great deal of Leylandii along fence lines, put in at a metre and left. The WS14 villages — Whittington, Shenstone, Wall and Hopwas — have larger plots, old field boundaries running through gardens, and hedgerow oak and ash showing dieback.

Tamworth splits again. Bolehall, Glascote and the streets near the castle grounds have Victorian and interwar houses with long narrow gardens, and along the Tame and Anker the ground is wet enough for willow and alder. Stonydelph, Belgrave, Leyfields and Wilnecote are the overspill estates: medium gardens, open-plan fronts, and a generation of birch, cherry, whitebeam and conifer from the 1960s and 1970s now past its useful size. Amington Hall Estate and Amington Green are the exception, with much bigger trees.

Much of the land between the two towns sits on Mercia Mudstone, often under glacial sand and gravel, and mudstone soils shrink and swell with the weather. If a surveyor has linked a tree to movement, share the report before anything is cut.

Tree work in Lichfield & Tamworth

The commonest job on the Tamworth estates is a conifer or birch at double the height it was meant to be. Hedge reduction brings a Leylandii run back to something workable; hedge removal takes it out at about £70 a metre, and the Leylandii removal guide explains what the roots leave behind. Small removals start from £280.

In Lichfield the paperwork comes first, and access is the other constraint: a rear garden off Dam Street or Sandford Street may only be reachable through the house.

On the WS14 and B78 village plots the work is larger: crown reduction on mature oak and lime, tree felling of ash with dieback, and stump grinding from £120 where a lawn or drive is going back down.

The tree surgeon we pass your enquiry to has had their insurance and NPTC chainsaw certificates checked. See tree surgery, or the Lichfield and Tamworth tree surgery page.