Our newly planted trees get a bit of extra love to help them get settle into your street environment. The extra care like watering and more regular pruning stops after 3 years and the trees are maintained under our Whole Street Pruning Program. We will prune the street trees in your street, as needed, once every three years. All pruning works are carried out in accordance with Australian Standard AS 4373-2007 ‘Pruning of amenity trees’.

We appreciate the understanding of residents and business owners that public trees may create some associated mess in private yards and property and in some cases may require you to clean up after them, particularly during certain times of the year. If you’re not able or willing to do this, perhaps you could seek help from a neighbour. If you’re a bit of a tree champion in your local street and are happy to help your neighbours tidy up leaf fall or tree debris in their yards or on the footpaths, we do value the role of our community in helping us to keep our streets green and tidy.

To help keep our local streets clean, street sweepers come through local streets approximately 5 times a year – after the verge mowing crew. However, we increase this service in local streets that have been identified as having avenues of predominantly deciduous trees in times of high leaf-fall (eg Autumn). If you are experiencing large amounts of leaf litter or tree debris in your street, let us know my making a report through the My Local Services app – attaching a photo of the street is helpful. You can also let us know by submitting an online request. We will organise a street sweeper to attend as soon as they’re able. We will also monitor heavily impacted streets into the future.

If you are concerned about public clearances or safety, including damaged or broken tree limbs, you can make a reactive Tree Maintenance/Care Request. Staff will review you request and inspect the tree, prioritising action if required.

If you notice an immediate public health or safety risk related to a tree, for example a fallen tree or large branch or branches, please contact us immediately on 8408 1111.

When we receive a request for Tree Care or Maintenance outside of the streets scheduled for Whole Street Pruning, we will inspect and assess the state of tree within 20 business days to determine if pruning is required. If it is, we will prioritise the pruning in accordance with risk management principles.

No. Only our qualified officers should prune our trees. They do this in accordance with the Australian Standards.

No. This is a private tree and we are not authorised to do this. A suitably qualified professional could be engaged by either party to undertake this work, however you should approach your neighbour in the first instance to speak to them about any issues you may have with their tree and discuss the best course of action. For more information about private trees, please visit Trees on Private Property.

No. Per our Tree and Vegetation Policy, we don’t consider shading of solar panels to be a valid reason for not planting a tree, removing a tree, or taking other tree action such a pruning a healthy tree. It’s important that we balance climate change mitigation strategies across the city, which includes our objective to increase tree canopy cover in the city to 25% by 2045. Further, we prune according to Australian Standard AS 4373-2007 ‘Pruning of amenity trees’, which don’t support pruning to reduce tree height when not required by legislation or other requirements.

A tree trunk that spans both council and private property but is on Council property by greater than 50% is considered Council property. If this situation applies to you and you are unsure about whose responsibility the tree is, or you need some help to maintain a shared tree that might be your responsibility, please contact us.