Tree Removal
Whole-tree takedowns on tight peninsula blocks, sectional dismantle or crane where the driveway will not take a truck.
Learn more →The palms people call about
Cocos palm, properly Syagrus romanzoffiana, is the one. It was planted in thousands across Sydney from the 1970s, it grows faster than anyone expected, it drops heavy fronds and a constant rain of hard yellow fruit, and it seeds straight into bushland. Most palm removal requests on the Northern Beaches are cocos palms.
Canary Island date palm is the other common one. Enormous crowns, vicious spines at the frond base, and a trunk heavy enough that removal near a house is a rigging job rather than a cut-and-drop. Bangalow palm and the native cabbage tree palm are usually worth keeping — they belong in the local gullies and they are generally protected.
Removal, or cleaning?
Removal makes sense when the palm is a cocos, when it is shading a roof it will never stop shading, when the root plate is lifting paving, or when it sits close enough to a bedroom window that a falling frond matters.
Cleaning makes sense far more often than people expect. A climber takes off the spent fronds, cuts out the flower and seed heads, and tidies the crown. On an exposed coastal block that single visit removes the falling hazard and the seed load at once, and it costs a fraction of removal. Anyone quoting removal on a healthy bangalow without mentioning cleaning as an option is not giving you the full picture.
How the work runs
Palms are climbed with spikes or a rope system depending on species and condition, and the crown is taken off first so the trunk comes down clean. Where there is a roof, a pool or a boundary underneath, sections are rigged and lowered rather than dropped.
Trunk material is cut and carted. Palm fibre does not chip well and does not compost like hardwood, so it usually leaves the site rather than going onto garden beds as mulch. If the stump is going, it is either ground — accepting that the fibrous trunk is hard on a grinder — or excavated whole where something is being built over it. The stump page covers what that involves.
Booking palm work on the Northern Beaches
Most palm jobs are half-day jobs and are often bundled with other work on the same property. If you have a cocos palm to go and a eucalypt that needs deadwooding, doing both in one visit saves a second mobilisation.
Call (02) 9000 1858 for a look at what you have. Storm-damaged palms, including crowns snapped out by a gust, are handled under emergency response. Suburb coverage is on the service areas page.
More services
Explore our other services
Tree Lopping and Pruning
Crown thinning, deadwooding and clearance pruning that leaves a eucalypt stable through a southerly buster.
Learn more →Stump Grinding and Removal
Grinding stumps and surface roots below grade so you can turf, pave or replant over sandstone shelf.
Learn more →Emergency and Storm Damage
After-hours callouts for trees on roofs, hung-up limbs and blocked driveways once an east coast low has passed.
Learn more →Hedge Trimming and Height Reduction
Lilly pilly, viburnum and pittosporum screens cut back to a line, plus honest advice on what a height reduction can and cannot do.
Learn more →
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a permit to remove a cocos palm?
Often not, but check rather than assume. Cocos palm is widely treated as an undesirable exotic in Sydney and many councils exempt it from tree protection, while native cabbage tree palms and bangalow palms are usually protected like any other tree. Northern Beaches Council publishes its own exempt species list, and that list is what governs your property.
Why is palm cleaning booked so often near the beach?
Because dead fronds and seed heads become projectiles. A Canary Island date palm carries a very heavy crown of spent fronds, and on an exposed beachfront block at Collaroy or Palm Beach a southerly will strip them onto whatever is below. Regular cleaning takes off the dead material and the seed before it has anywhere to go.
Are palm stumps harder to grind?
They are different rather than harder. Palm trunk is fibrous and full of water, not woody, so it clogs a grinder and blunts teeth quickly. Small palms are often better dug out whole. Large date palms have a heavy root ball that has to come out if anything is being built or paved on the spot.
Is the seed really a problem?
Yes, in this part of Sydney. Cocos palm fruit is spread by flying foxes and birds into the bushland reserves along the Ku-ring-gai Chase edge and the creek lines behind Narrabeen and Warriewood, where it germinates readily. Removing the seed heads before they ripen is the reason a lot of bush-adjacent owners book cleaning rather than waiting for removal.
Free, no-obligation