Hedge Trimming and Pruning Services WA 2026 - Get Quotes

What Hedge and Pruning Work Covers

Hedge trimming and pruning sound like the same job and they are not. Trimming a hedge means shearing the outer growth to a defined face and top so the plant stays dense and holds its shape, and it is repetitive maintenance work done on a cycle. Pruning a tree or shrub means removing selected branches for a reason, whether to improve structure, remove dead or diseased wood, lift the canopy or reduce risk, and each cut is a decision. One is measured in metres and the other in judgement. Most gardens need both, and most contractors are better at one than the other.

A routine hedge visit is straightforward and quick when the cycle has been kept. The contractor shears the faces and the top to the established line, cleans out any dead material inside, tidies the base, then rakes up and removes the clippings. On a well maintained hedge the amount of material coming off is small and the plant barely notices. That is exactly why keeping the cycle is cheaper than restoring later. Ask whether the clean up includes blowing down paths and paving, since that is what makes a job look finished. Clippings left in a garden bed sit there for months in Perth sand rather than breaking down quickly.

Restoring an overgrown hedge is a different job with a different price and a different result. Three years of growth means cutting back into older wood, which on many species exposes bare stems that look sparse for a season or two while new growth fills in, and on some species will not reshoot at all. The volume of green waste is several times a routine cut. A contractor who warns you the hedge will look poor for a while before it looks good is being honest rather than pessimistic. Ask before booking whether the species will recover from the cut you are asking for.

Structural pruning on a young tree is the highest value work in this trade and the least often bought. Removing competing leaders, correcting crossing branches and establishing good form while the tree is small produces a sound tree for the next fifty years, and it costs very little compared with dealing with a defect at maturity. Most Perth gardens never have it done. Where a tree has been planted in the last few years, it is worth asking an arborist to look at it once. It is also the cheapest arboriculture you will ever buy, since the tree is small enough to work from the ground. A single visit at year three can save a structural failure at year thirty.

Crown lifting, thinning and dead wooding are the common requests on established trees. Lifting raises the lower canopy to clear a roof, a driveway or a line of sight, thinning removes selected branches to let light and wind through, and dead wooding takes out the dead material that will eventually fall. Each is a defined operation with a defined purpose. The tree lopping and arborist services page covers the wider range of tree work available. Each also has a different price, so being specific about which one you want avoids a mismatch between quote and expectation.

What none of these should be is topping. Cutting the top out of a tree to reduce its height removes the leaf area it lives on, forces a mass of weak regrowth from the cut points, exposes the trunk to sunburn and decay and generally shortens the life of the tree while making it more dangerous rather than less. It remains distressingly common in Perth gardens. If a contractor proposes taking a third off the top of a healthy tree, ask them to explain the reasoning and listen carefully to the answer. Anyone considering it should ask what the tree will look like in three years, because the answer is a thicket of upright shoots growing from the cut points. Those shoots are attached only to the outer wood and they break out readily in a strong wind.

Timing Through the Western Australian Seasons

The south west's Mediterranean climate gives a clear growth pattern and the trimming cycle follows it. Most hedges put on their strongest growth from late winter through spring as soil warms and the winter rain is still in the ground, slow through the heat of February, then push again briefly in autumn. Two cuts a year, one in late spring after the main flush and one in autumn, keeps most Perth hedges in shape. Fast growers such as ficus and photinia often want three. Ask which months your particular hedge should be cut in, since the answer varies by species. A contractor who cuts everything on the same schedule regardless of species is working to their diary rather than to the garden.

Avoid cutting hard in the middle of summer. Removing a large volume of foliage in January exposes interior growth that has never seen direct sun to forty degree afternoons, and the scorching that follows is entirely avoidable. A light tidy is fine, a hard reshape is not. The same logic applies to any pruning that opens a canopy substantially. Late afternoon cutting in summer is marginally kinder than midday if something has to be done.

Spring brings the nesting season and it constrains the work more than people expect. Native birds and their nests are protected in Western Australia, and cutting a hedge or removing branches containing an active nest is both unlawful and avoidable. Dense hedges are exactly where small birds nest, and a great many Perth hedges hold nests through the August to December period. A conscientious contractor checks before starting and will move a job rather than destroy a nest. A quick look through the hedge with a torch takes a minute and settles it. Small birds sit tight rather than flying off, so an empty looking hedge is not proof of anything.

Autumn is the best window for larger work in most of the state. Temperatures are dropping, the plant has the mild wet months ahead to recover, and contractors are easier to book than in the spring rush. Restoring an overgrown hedge in April gives it the whole winter and spring to fill back in before the next summer. Doing the same job in December is asking a stressed plant to recover in the worst possible conditions. Autumn work also produces green waste at a time when transfer stations are less congested.

Fruit trees run to their own calendar. Deciduous fruit trees are generally pruned in winter while dormant, stone fruit is often pruned after harvest to reduce disease risk, and citrus, which is everywhere in Perth gardens, is best pruned lightly after fruiting rather than hard in winter. Citrus also sunburns readily when a canopy is opened up, so exposed limbs are sometimes painted. Getting the timing right on fruit trees affects next season's crop directly. Painting exposed citrus limbs with a diluted white paint after an opening cut is standard practice here and it prevents scorching. A citrus that has lost its canopy in one cut will take two seasons to fruit properly again.

Native shrubs have their own rules and heavy handed cutting kills them. Many Western Australian natives, including westringia, grevillea and many of the pea flowered shrubs, will not reshoot from bare old wood, which means a light annual trim into green growth keeps them dense while one hard cut can finish them. Tip pruning after flowering is the reliable approach. This is one of the most common ways a good native garden is ruined by well intentioned maintenance. Tip pruning after flowering also encourages the next season's flower buds on many species. A native hedge trimmed lightly twice a year will outlast one sheared hard once.

In bushfire prone areas the timing question has a deadline attached. Local governments issue annual firebreak and fuel hazard notices with a date before the fire season, and pruning to lift canopies away from ground fuel and clear vegetation from around buildings often forms part of compliance. Booking that work in autumn or early winter avoids the October scramble when every crew in the hills is committed. Fuel management guidance for this state comes from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. Clearing vegetation away from the eaves and the roof line is usually part of the same visit.

Hedge Species and How They Behave

Ficus hillii is the hedge Perth planted by the kilometre and the one that causes the most trouble later. It screens fast, takes hard shearing, holds a crisp face and tolerates the heat, which is why it lines so many boundaries across the metropolitan area. Its root system is aggressive and opportunistic, and in sandy soil it will travel a long way towards water, which means soakwells, stormwater lines, old sewer connections and neighbouring paving are all at risk. Planted well clear of services it is an excellent hedge, and planted a metre from a soakwell it is a future invoice. Where the hedge sits over a leach drain or an old septic line, that risk is higher again. A soil test and a look at where your services run is worth doing before planting a new ficus hedge.

Murraya paniculata suits Perth conditions and behaves itself. The foliage is glossy, the white flowers are strongly scented through the warm months, it handles heat and reflected light well and it responds to regular light shearing. It fills in more slowly than ficus and it sulks in deep shade. For a hedge that will sit near paving or services, it is a far safer long term choice. Ask the contractor to note where the hedge sits relative to your soakwells before the first cut. Where roots have already entered a stormwater line, the pipe relining and drain repairs page covers the remedy.

Lilly pilly and the related Syzygium varieties give attractive coloured new growth and good density. The variable factor is psyllid, a sap sucking insect that causes the pimpled, distorted leaves familiar to anyone who has grown a susceptible variety, and cultivar selection matters more than treatment does. Resistant selections are widely available and worth specifying. Regular trimming also removes affected growth as it appears. It also flowers repeatedly through the warm months rather than in one short burst.

Photinia was planted heavily across Perth for its red new growth and it needs regular work to stay good. Cut often enough, it holds a dense red flushed face all season, and left alone it becomes leggy and thin at the base with all the colour up top. It also dislikes being cut hard back into old wood. It suits a household that will maintain the cycle rather than one that will not. Cutting them lightly and often into green growth is what keeps them from going woody at the base. Ask the nursery for a resistant cultivar by name.

Natives make excellent hedges in Western Australia and they are underused. Westringia clips into a neat formal hedge, tolerates coastal wind and salt, needs very little water once established and suits the watering roster far better than any exotic. Callistemon, acacia and several of the coastal species also hedge well with the right maintenance. The only rule is to trim lightly and often rather than hard and rarely, since most will not recover from bare wood. Feeding it in autumn and again in spring keeps the colour strong.

Conifers and cypress give formal height and they are unforgiving of neglect. Species in this group generally will not reshoot from old brown wood, so a hedge allowed to grow past its intended dimensions cannot simply be cut back to size, and a bare patch stays bare. Maintaining the face annually while green growth remains on the outer layer is the only way to keep one. Anyone inheriting an overgrown conifer hedge should get honest advice before cutting. They also support far more insect and bird life than a clipped exotic hedge does. Feed it in autumn and it holds colour through winter.

Bamboo deserves a specific warning because the difference between types is enormous. Clumping bamboo stays where it is planted and makes a fine screen, while running bamboo spreads underground and will appear in the neighbour's lawn, under paving and through garden beds, and removing it is a serious excavation job. If you are planting bamboo, confirm the type in writing from the supplier. If you have inherited running bamboo, deal with it early rather than late. Inheriting one usually means either accepting its current dimensions or replacing it, and there is rarely a middle path. Replacing a section of a conifer hedge never blends, because the new plants take years to catch up.

Whatever the species, a hedge needs water and feeding to perform in sand. Perth soils hold very little nutrient, and a hedge is a row of plants competing with each other in a narrow strip, so an unfed hedge thins from the bottom and goes pale. A drip line along the hedge on its own irrigation station is the sensible arrangement, and the reticulation and garden watering page covers setting that up properly. Removing established running bamboo is closer to an excavation job than a gardening one, and the tree root removal page covers that kind of work.

Pruning Trees and Shrubs Properly

Good pruning follows a published standard rather than personal preference. The Australian Standard covering the pruning of amenity trees sets out how cuts are made, where they are placed relative to the branch collar, how much live crown may reasonably be removed and what practices are not acceptable. A contractor who works to it will use the terminology naturally and will explain what they intend to remove and why. Those standards are published by Standards Australia. A hedge sharing a station with lawn sprinklers is almost always underwatered, since the two need quite different run times.

Cut placement is the detail that matters most and it is invisible to most homeowners. A cut made just outside the branch collar lets the tree seal the wound naturally, while a flush cut into the trunk removes the tissue that does the sealing and opens a path for decay, and a stub left too long simply dies back. Larger limbs are removed in stages so the bark does not tear as the weight goes. None of this is complicated and all of it separates a pruner from someone with a saw. A hedge that has thinned at the base is almost always short of water, nutrient or light rather than suffering a disease.

How much comes off in one go has limits. Removing a large proportion of a tree's live canopy in a single operation stresses it significantly, triggers vigorous weak regrowth and can start a decline that plays out over years. Sensible practice is to stagger heavy work across seasons rather than doing everything at once. A contractor proposing to take half the canopy off in an afternoon is not doing you a favour. Ask the contractor to show you where they intend to cut on a significant limb before they start. Wound paints are largely unnecessary on most species and are no substitute for a correctly placed cut.

Reduction pruning is the honest alternative to topping where a tree genuinely is too large. It shortens branches back to a suitable lateral that can take over as the new leader, keeping the tree's form and its ability to seal the cut, and it is slower and more skilled work than shearing the top off. It is also not unlimited, and some trees are simply in the wrong place. Where that is the case, an arborist should say so rather than mutilating the tree annually. Spreading the work over two or three visits also spreads the cost.

Dead wooding is the maintenance job most worth buying on a large established tree. Eucalypts in particular shed limbs, and dead material in the canopy is the material most likely to come down in a front or on a hot still afternoon, so removing it reduces real risk. It also improves the look of the tree without changing its form. On a large tree over a house or a driveway, it is money well spent every few years. Ask what the tree will look like in two years, not just when the crew drives away.

Hygiene between properties matters more in Western Australia than most people realise. Phytophthora dieback affects jarrah and a great many native species through the south west, and it is spread in soil and plant material on boots, tools and vehicles. Contractors working across bushland properties and through the South West should be cleaning down between sites. It is a fair question to ask and a professional will have an answer. Removing more than about a quarter of the live canopy at once is generally more than a mature tree should be asked to absorb.

Pruning around structures needs thinking about beyond the tree. Branches over a roof drop leaves into gutters and provide a path for rodents and possums, branches near a fence line push it over slowly, and roots follow canopies. Clearing a roof line is worth combining with a gutter clean, which the gutter cleaning page covers, and where a rodent path has already been established the pest control page covers dealing with it. Dieback is not curable in an infected area, so avoiding its spread is the entire strategy.

Height, Access and Powerlines

Overhead powerlines set a hard limit on what a general gardener may do. Western Australia sets minimum approach distances for work near live electrical apparatus, and vegetation within those zones is handled by accredited operators working under arrangements with the network operator rather than by an ordinary hedging crew. A hedge or tree that has grown into the service line running to your house is not a hedge trimming job. Approach distances are set out by Energy Safety and there is no discretion in them. Branches resting on a roof also abrade the covering every time the wind moves them, and the roof repairs page covers the damage that follows.

The line between the network's equipment and your own decides who pays. Everything up to and including the service line at the attachment point is the network's asset, and the consumer mains running on from there into your meter box are yours. Vegetation fouling your own consumer mains is your cost and often needs an electrician alongside the tree work. The electrical services page covers arranging that side. Assume every line is live and treat the clearance zone as absolute rather than approximate.

Working at height is where hedge trimming turns from gardening into something regulated. A crew on a ladder with a running hedge trimmer above head height is a genuine hazard, and proper practice on tall hedges means a platform, a scaffold or a pole tool used from the ground. Workplace safety requirements in this state are administered by WorkSafe WA. A contractor who turns up to a four metre hedge with a domestic ladder is telling you how they work. Ask specifically whether the contractor is accredited for work near live conductors before they quote. An accredited operator will say so immediately and produce the paperwork without being pressed.

Access down the side of a house shapes the price on most Perth blocks. A hedge reachable with a trailer parked in the driveway is a quicker job than one behind a metre wide gate where every barrow of clippings comes out one at a time, and infill development has made narrow access the norm rather than the exception. Tell the contractor about access when you first make contact. A quote given without seeing the path will change. A pole saw used from the ground is safer and often faster than a ladder on a sloping Perth lawn.

Verge and street trees are not yours to prune. A tree on the road reserve is managed by the local government, and pruning or lopping one without permission can attract a penalty as well as a replacement cost, even where it is dropping leaves into your gutters. Councils will attend genuine hazards and will generally decline aesthetic requests. Contact details for every WA local government are published through wa.gov.au. Where the only access is through the house, ask how the material will be carried out. Hollow stems are a reliable sign of the running type.

Two storey hedges and tall screens need a realistic conversation about what is achievable. Maintaining a four or five metre hedge to a crisp finish takes equipment, time and skill, and the annual cost reflects that. Reducing the height once to something maintainable is often the better decision, provided the species will tolerate it. An arborist who explains that trade off is worth listening to. Councils will also usually prune a street tree that is genuinely obstructing a footpath if you report it.

Boundary Hedges and Neighbours

Hedges on boundaries generate more neighbour disputes than almost anything else in a garden. Western Australia has no dedicated tree and hedge disputes statute of the kind some other states have, so these situations are dealt with under general law and by agreement between the parties. That means the practical answer is usually a conversation rather than a legal process. It also means nobody has an obvious right to demand a neighbour reduce a hedge simply because they dislike it. Reducing a hedge to two and a half metres makes it maintainable from the ground, which changes the annual cost permanently. Ask for the cut to be shown to you first.

Overhanging growth can generally be cut back to the boundary line and there are limits to that. A property owner may usually remove growth that crosses onto their land, subject to any local government protection over the tree, and provided the cutting does not damage the plant so badly that it dies or becomes unsafe. Cutting a neighbour's hedge back to bare wood on your side, knowing it will not reshoot, is a good way to end up in a dispute. Where the tree is protected or the relationship is already strained, legal advice beforehand is cheaper than afterwards. Ask the contractor for a written recommendation on the reduction, since you may need it for a neighbour or a council.

Cut material belongs to the owner of the plant. Throwing branches back over the fence is not the remedy people think it is, and it reliably escalates a situation that a phone call would have resolved. Offering the clippings back, or simply disposing of them, costs very little. Almost every serious hedge dispute began with something thrown over a fence. Written agreement between neighbours about a shared hedge is worth having even informally. Two lighter reductions beat one severe one.

A shared maintenance arrangement is the sensible outcome and it is common where neighbours get on. Both sides of a boundary hedge get cut in the same visit by the same contractor, the cost is split, and the hedge looks the same from both gardens. It also removes the ladder over the fence problem entirely. Suggesting it costs nothing and often works. Where a hedge is genuinely on the boundary line, both owners have an interest in how it is cut.

Sight lines and fence heights are regulated in ways that catch people out. Local governments set rules about vegetation height near driveways, corners and intersections so that drivers can see, and about what may be planted in front setbacks, and a hedge that has grown across a footpath can attract a notice. These rules are local rather than statewide. Checking your council's position takes one call. A short note or a knock on the door before the work starts prevents most of these disputes. Boot washing between properties is the basic measure.

Where a hedge is doing the work of a fence, the question of replacing it with an actual fence sometimes resolves everything. A fence has a defined line, a defined height, a shared cost arrangement under the local fencing law and no roots. The fence and gate installation page covers the options. For a boundary where a hedge has become a long running argument, it is worth considering. It also means the hedge is cut to one line rather than two slightly different ones.

Green Waste, Mulch and Quarantine

Green waste is a real cost and it is the item most often left vague in a quote. A routine hedge trim produces a trailer load at most, while restoring an overgrown hedge or pruning a large tree can produce several, and the contractor either chips it, takes it to a transfer station and pays a fee, or leaves it with you. Each of those is a different price. Ask directly what happens to the material and whether disposal is included. A hedge blocking a driveway sight line is also a genuine safety issue rather than a technicality. Assume the clearance zone is larger than it looks.

Chipping on site and leaving the mulch suits plenty of gardens. Fresh chip from a hedge or tree makes serviceable garden mulch, it is free, and in Perth sand any organic matter is welcome. It is worth keeping fresh chip away from the base of sensitive plants and off the slab edge of the house, and letting it age before spreading it thickly. Where you want the mulch, say so when you book, because many crews assume you do not. A neighbour who has agreed to a shared cut is also far less likely to complain about the noise on the day.

The polyphagous shot hole borer has changed how green waste is handled across parts of Perth. The beetle was detected in the metropolitan area and a quarantine area applies, restricting how host plant material and green waste may be moved out of affected areas and how it must be disposed of, with the aim of limiting its spread. Hundreds of trees across the affected suburbs have been removed as part of the response. Contractors working inside the quarantine area have specific obligations and should be able to explain them. Ask for the number of trailer loads to be estimated rather than left open ended. Narrow side gates slow every stage of the job.

What that means for a homeowner is worth knowing before booking. If your property is inside the affected area, green waste from host species cannot simply be taken wherever a contractor finds convenient, and the current requirements are published by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. Species affected include fig, box elder maple, coral tree and a number of others common in Perth gardens. Asking whether your suburb and species are affected is a sensible first question. Fresh chip also draws nitrogen from the soil surface as it breaks down, so a light feed alongside it helps.

Signs of borer activity are worth recognising even outside the quarantine area. Small round entry holes in the trunk or branches, fine sawdust or frass, staining or oozing around the holes, and branch dieback in an otherwise healthy tree are all reasons to have a tree looked at. Reporting suspected detections is how the response works. It costs nothing and it matters. A pile of fresh chip left against a fence will heat up considerably as it breaks down. Reduce it once and the saving repeats every year.

For larger clean ups a bin is usually cheaper than paying a crew to cart. A skip or a green waste bin left on site lets you fill it over a weekend after the contractor has done the cutting, and it separates the skilled work from the labouring. The skip bin hire page and the rubbish removal page both cover the disposal options. Confirm that green waste is acceptable in the bin you book. Movement of material out of the affected area is the specific thing the requirements target.

Council verge collections are useful and they have limits. Most Western Australian local governments run scheduled green waste verge collections, with rules on bundle sizes, branch diameters and how long material may sit on the verge beforehand, and putting a hedge restoration out three weeks early is a good way to receive a letter. Check your council's collection dates before scheduling the work. Timing a big cut to land a week before a collection saves a disposal fee entirely. Reports can be made to the department directly and early detection is what limits its spread. Say so in writing if the hedge is genuinely shared.

Costs in Detail

A small hedge up to about ten metres long and within reach from the ground runs $120 to $320 a visit including clean up. That assumes a maintained hedge being cut on its normal cycle rather than a restoration. Below that length most contractors will apply a minimum call out, since the travel and setup cost the same regardless. Bundling the hedge with other garden work in the same visit usually gives a better rate. Tools and vehicles moving between affected and unaffected suburbs are part of how these pests travel.

Hedge trimming by the linear metre runs $12 to $35 depending on height, depth and species. The rate climbs sharply once the work goes above comfortable reach, because a platform or pole tools slow everything down. Dense species that take a heavy cut, such as ficus, sit above light species at the same dimensions. Ask whether the quoted rate covers both faces and the top. Book the bin for the day the crew finishes rather than the day they start. Sight line rules apply to corner blocks in particular.

Tall or badly overgrown hedges are usually quoted hourly at $95 to $160 for a contractor with equipment, or as a lump sum after an inspection. A restoration on a three metre ficus hedge that has not been cut in three years can easily run a full day for two people plus several trailer loads of waste. This is the scenario where the cost of deferring maintenance becomes obvious. A quote given without seeing that hedge is not worth much. Bundles left out too early also become a hazard and a source of complaints.

Tree pruning is priced by the operation rather than by the hour on most domestic jobs. Formative pruning on a small tree runs $180 to $550, crown lifting or thinning a medium tree runs $350 to $1,200, and dead wooding a large established tree runs $450 to $1,600 depending on size, access and what sits underneath. Work requiring an elevated platform or rigging over a structure prices above those ranges. The stump grinding and removal page covers the related work where a tree comes out entirely. Below about six metres of hedge, most contractors will quote a flat minimum. Ask whether mulch can be left where you want it.

Green waste removal runs $90 to $260 per trailer load depending on the volume and the disposal fee at the receiving facility. Leaving mulch on site removes that cost where you can use it. Quarantine area requirements can add to disposal costs in affected suburbs, which is another reason to establish early whether yours is one. Ask for disposal to be shown as its own line rather than absorbed. Ask whether the price assumes the hedge is on its normal cycle or has been left.

Regular maintenance visits run $80 to $220 depending on the scope and frequency, and a standing arrangement almost always costs less per visit than ad hoc bookings. Contractors price a predictable route more keenly than a one off across town. Outside the metropolitan area travel enters the figure, though crews based in Bunbury, Albany, Geraldton or Kalgoorlie charge much the same as city operators on their own run. In smaller towns, getting on a regular run is often the difference between reliable service and none. Ask whether the quoted rate includes the top of the hedge or only the faces, since that assumption differs between contractors. Early detection keeps the response area smaller.

What to Look Out For

Be wary of anyone who offers to reduce a tree's height by cutting the top out. Topping removes the leaf area the tree lives on, produces weak regrowth from the cut points, exposes the trunk to decay and makes the tree more hazardous over time rather than less. Reduction pruning back to suitable laterals is the proper technique and it takes more skill. A contractor who does not know the difference should not be pruning your trees. Rigging over a pool or a patio adds time and therefore cost.

Check whether nesting season applies before booking spring work. Native birds and their active nests are protected in Western Australia, and dense hedges are exactly where small birds nest through the August to December period. A contractor who checks a hedge before starting is doing the right thing, and one who shears straight through is creating a problem for both of you. Moving the job a few weeks is usually all it takes. Where mulch is left on site, ask for it to be spread rather than dumped in a heap. Confirm the bin type accepts green waste.

Ask about the borer quarantine if you are in the metropolitan area. Green waste from host species in affected suburbs is subject to movement and disposal requirements, and a contractor who has never heard of it is either working outside the area or not paying attention. The question takes ten seconds and the answer tells you something about the operator. It also protects you from being part of spreading it. A crew already working your street on the same day will usually price the job better.

Watch for a quote that says nothing about the clippings. Disposal is a genuine cost and a quote that covers only the cutting can leave you with a pile of material on the verge and a separate bill or a separate problem. Confirm whether waste removal is included, whether mulch can be left, and what happens if the volume exceeds what was expected. This is the single most common source of dispute on a hedging job. Regional contractors also tend to book out well before the firebreak deadline each year. A minimum call out usually applies below that.

Be careful about hard cutting natives and conifers. Many Western Australian natives and almost all conifers will not reshoot from bare old wood, so a hard reduction that would be fine on a ficus can permanently disfigure or kill them. A contractor who asks what the species is before quoting a hard cut knows this. One who does not is about to find out at your expense. Where a hedge has outgrown its position entirely, replacing it may cost less over five years than maintaining it.

One last thing, take the powerline question seriously even when the branches only look close. Work near live conductors is restricted to accredited operators for good reason, and a crew willing to work around a service line without the right accreditation is cutting corners that could kill someone. Where vegetation is anywhere near the line, contact the network operator first. The delay is a few days and it is the right delay to accept. Reporting a suspected borer detection is free and it is the right thing to do. Ask what happens if the volume exceeds the estimate.

How to Get Comparable Quotes

Have the details ready before you ring. A photograph will do where you cannot name the species, along with the length and height of each hedge, how long since it was last cut, how many trees and roughly how tall, what sits underneath them, how a trailer would reach the work, and whether you want the material taken away or mulched on site. Photographs from two or three angles including the access path are worth more than any description. A hedge cut in three visits a year rarely needs a restoration at all.

Give every contractor the same scope. Which hedges and which faces, the finished height and depth you want, which trees and what operation on each, whether green waste is removed or left, whether the site is cleaned and blown down afterwards, the expected duration, their insurance position and whether they hold an arboriculture qualification for any tree work. Written answers are what make three prices comparable. Ask what the contractor does if a nest is found once the work has started.

Ask about qualifications where trees are involved. Western Australia does not license arborists, so anyone can advertise the work, and the recognised arboriculture certificates are what separate a pruner from a person with a chainsaw. For hedge trimming a qualification matters far less, and for structural pruning on a mature tree it matters a great deal. Ask which one you are getting. Photographs taken from the same spot each year also make it easy to see how a hedge is tracking.

Set up a cycle rather than booking reactively. A standing arrangement of two or three visits a year keeps hedges in shape, costs less per visit and avoids the expensive restoration cycle entirely, and most contractors will price a regular customer more keenly than a one off. It also means someone who knows your garden is looking at it regularly. The lawn mowing and garden maintenance page covers bundling it with other routine work. Where a tree overhangs a neighbour's property, mention that too so access can be arranged.

Think about the whole garden when you are booking. Hedge work, tree pruning, mulching, reticulation checks and a gutter clean all overlap, and pricing them together usually beats booking each separately across the year. The landscaping page covers the larger projects that sometimes emerge from a maintenance conversation. Getting it all quoted at once gives you a real annual figure rather than a series of surprises. Ask whether the contractor carries public liability cover and for how much.