About Bristol Tree Fellas, tree surgeons in Bristol
A local tree surgery outfit working on Bristol's trees — the mature limes and planes of Clifton and Redland, the overgrown leylandii of the post-war estates, and everything self-seeded in between.
Tree work across Bristol, priced honestly
Bristol Tree Fellas are tree surgeons covering Bristol and the area around it. We work mostly on domestic gardens — felling and removals, tree cutting and pruning, crown reductions, stump grinding and hedge work — alongside regular maintenance for landlords, agents and commercial sites.
Bristol is a genuinely awkward city to do tree work in, and it is worth understanding why, because it is what most of the price is made of. The city is built on hills, so a great many gardens are terraced, steep, or reachable only through the house. Whole neighbourhoods — Clifton, Cotham, Redland and more besides — sit inside conservation areas, which means the council has to be notified before anything is cut. And the trees themselves are old: Bristol has a lot of large, mature broadleaves standing far closer to houses than anyone would plant them today, plus decades of leylandii screens planted as a quick fix in the seventies that are now thirty feet tall.
So what we are really selling is not chainsaw work. It is knowing what a tree actually needs, knowing whether you are allowed to do it, and knowing how to get it out of a garden with one gate and no rear access without wrecking the place.
Four things we hold ourselves to
Nothing here is complicated. It is mostly the stuff people say they wish the last tree firm had done.
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Check the tree's status before quoting
Bristol is full of protected trees. We check TPOs and conservation-area boundaries before we price anything, and we submit the notice or application for you rather than leaving it as your problem.
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Fix the price in writing
The quote covers the work, the chipping, the waste and the clear-up. It does not grow because the wood turned out to be heavier than expected.
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Say the unprofitable thing
If a tree does not need felling we will tell you, and quote for the pruning instead. If it needs nothing at all, we will tell you that too.
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Leave the garden better than we found it
Brash chipped, timber taken away or stacked where you want it, ground raked and blown down. You should not be sweeping up after us.
What actually happens when you call
You ring, or you send the callback form and we ring you. We ask roughly where you are, roughly how big the tree is next to the house, and whether there is vehicle access to the back — not to price it over the phone, but so we know what to bring.
Then we come and look. We check the tree's condition, the target underneath it, the access route for the wood, and whether it carries a TPO or stands in a conservation area. You get told what we found, what your options are, and what each of them involves — including the option of doing nothing, when that is genuinely the right answer.
If you want a price, it comes in writing: the work described in plain terms, chipping and waste removal included, and a fixed number. If you would rather think about it, that is fine. We do not chase and we do not doorstep.
Protected trees, nesting birds and working safely
Two bits of law shape a lot of tree work in Bristol, and both catch people out.
The first is tree protection. A Tree Preservation Order needs a formal application to Bristol City Council and a decision before work begins; a tree in a conservation area needs six weeks' written notice instead. Both apply regardless of whose garden the tree is in, and cutting a protected tree without consent is a criminal offence carrying a serious fine — so we check first, every time.
The second is nesting birds. Between roughly March and August all active wild birds' nests are protected, which means hedges and trees have to be checked before work starts and the job may need to wait. It is one of the reasons winter is a better time to book anything non-urgent.
On top of that there is the ordinary business of doing this safely: rigging loads that are heavier than they look, keeping a drop zone clear, and never touching a tree that is in contact with electricity service cables until the network operator has isolated them.
Tree surgeons covering Bristol & the surrounding area
We work right across Bristol and out into the towns around it — from Clifton, Redland and Bishopston to Fishponds, Bedminster, Downend and Kingswood, and on to Portishead, Nailsea, Clevedon and Keynsham.
Want us to take a look at it?
One phone call and we will arrange a time to come out. The quote is free, it is fixed, it is written down, and there is no obligation attached to it.