Tree Work In Labrador

An old suburb being rebuilt

Labrador runs along the Broadwater between Southport and Biggera Waters, and it is one of the older established parts of the Gold Coast. The original housing was fibro and brick cottages on lots of 500 to 700 square metres, much of it built in the 1960s and 1970s, and much of it now being replaced with duplexes and small townhouse developments.

That gives the suburb two distinct tree problems. The first is mature planting that has outgrown its lot — poinciana, weeping fig, mango, jacaranda, camphor laurel and cocos palm, all of them forty to sixty years old, all of them planted when the house was smaller and the carport did not exist. The second is redevelopment pressure, where a knock-down rebuild wants the block clear and the tree position has not been checked.

Water on one side, clay on the other

The Broadwater frontage brings salt-laden wind, but it is the sheltered version — the Spit and South Stradbroke break the open-ocean swell and much of the wind, so the salt load is well below what Palm Beach or Coolangatta take. Crowns on the water side still burn back, and pruning wounds still decay faster, but the effect is milder.

Inland from the foreshore the ground is mostly clay and old estuarine fill. Clay holds water, and after several days of summer rain the root zone under a top-heavy fig or poinciana is saturated. That, rather than wind alone, is what puts trees over in January. The defensive measure is end-weight reduction and deadwood removal done in late winter.

Clay also makes for slower but kinder stump grinding than the sand further south — the teeth last longer, the going is heavier.

Council position

City of Gold Coast planning scheme applies. The foreshore reserve and the Broadwater parklands are council land. The vegetation management overlay picks up the Coombabah Creek and Biggera Creek margins at the northern end of the suburb and the remnant pockets around the Broadwater parklands. Street trees on the older avenues are council assets. We check the mapping for your lot before quoting.

Access

Mixed. The older detached lots usually give a single driveway and a side gate around 900mm, which means climbing and sectional dismantling with everything carried out. The newer duplex sites are often already open, which makes the same tree substantially cheaper — worth sequencing the tree work with the demolition rather than after the slab goes down.

Street parking is tight on the narrower avenues, so jobs needing a chipper and tipper on the kerb run better early in the day.

Body corporate and older unit stock

Labrador has a large stock of 1970s and 1980s walk-up units, and their landscaped setbacks are full of mature planting that has outgrown the beds it was put in. Those are body corporate jobs: the committee instructs the work, an owner cannot arrange it unilaterally, and a written scope is usually needed before money is spent. The trees themselves are typically figs, poincianas and cocos palms in narrow strips between a driveway and a boundary, which means rigging and hand-carrying rather than machine work even though the block looks accessible from the street.

Ring (07) 5230 8034. Nearby: Southport, Helensvale and Hope Island. See the cost guide.