Twelve Years In The Canopy,Run By The Man Who Climbs It, Jack Newton

Most of our work is for homeowners on the Surrey, Kent and Sussex borders who have a tree that has stopped being an asset. An oak that has grown over the roof. A conifer screen that took the light out of the garden ten years ago. A cherry that split in a February gale and is now leaning on a fence. Alongside that we work for landlords, letting agents, estates, schools, farms and builders who need a plot cleared or a boundary cut back before the next trade turns up.

What we specialise in is the awkward version of the job. Straight felling in an open field is not difficult. Taking a forty-foot ash down in sections when the drop zone is a three-metre strip between a greenhouse and a neighbour's decking is a different piece of work, and it is the kind we are set up for: a climber on ropes, two on the ground, and each section lowered rather than dropped.

Jack has been in the trade twelve years. That length of time shows up in the parts of a job customers never see, reading where a limb will swing before the cut, knowing which councils want what on a TPO application, spotting that the tree someone asked to have felled only needs a reduction and a dead-wood.

We cover fifteen towns from the Oxted yard: Oxted, Westerham, Edenbridge, Sevenoaks, Biggin Hill, Bromley, Tunbridge Wells, Redhill, Reigate, Caterham, Godstone, Lingfield, East Grinstead, Crawley, Horsham. Jobs within a 10-mile radius are standard rate; work outside that radius may carry an additional charge, and we will tell you that at quote stage rather than on the invoice.