What every new homeowner should know before touching the tree in their new garden
By Simon Forster, Principal Arborist at The Tree Fella, an Arb Approved Contractor based in South Shields.
You've just bought your first home, and there's a mature tree in the garden. Nobody handed you a manual with the keys. Maybe you're wondering whether it needs a trim, whether it's dangerous, or whether it's even yours to touch. As arborists, this is the question we get asked most by first-time tree owners, so here's where we'd start.
A good place to begin is the National Tree Safety Group's "Common Sense Risk Management of Trees", a guidance document backed by the Health and Safety Executive and produced by a cross-section of the arboricultural industry. Its central message is simple: trees are living organisms, and it is entirely normal for them to shed branches from time to time. The goal isn't to eliminate every risk, which is impossible, but to manage it proportionately. If you take one thing from this article, take that. It reframes almost every decision that follows.
The maintenance myth: why less is often more
New owners often assume a tree needs regular pruning to stay tidy or healthy, in the same way a hedge does. It doesn't. A tree is a self-regulating system. Roots, trunk and crown constantly communicate through hormone signals, balancing growth, energy storage and structural strength. Left alone, a healthy tree is remarkably good at organising itself.
Pruning interrupts that. Every cut disrupts the tree's own signalling and forces it to react and reallocate resources, rather than progress along its natural course. Done well, for good reason, this is manageable. Done for the sake of tidiness, it's disruption dressed up as care, which is really "de-maintenance" rather than maintenance.
People often think a job well done means a tree has been cut. Sometimes the better job is knowing when not to. - Simon Forster, The Tree Fella.
If work is genuinely needed, use the Arboricultural Association's Arb Approved Contractor scheme to find a properly vetted arborist, such as ourselves, rather than whoever's van has a chainsaw chucked in the back of it.
Before you book anyone: three things worth checking first
First, check whether your tree is protected. A Tree Preservation Order (TPO) makes it a criminal offence to prune, fell or damage a protected tree without permission from your local planning authority, and trees in conservation areas carry similar restrictions. Your solicitor's search should flag a TPO during the house purchase, but it's worth checking directly with the council too, since not everything makes it into every search. Getting this wrong can mean a significant fine.
Second, know the difference between two documents that often get confused. A mortgage or subsidence risk report is about ground movement, looking at whether a tree's roots could be contributing to soil shrinkage that affects your foundations, and it's usually commissioned by a lender or insurer. A tree safety inspection is a different thing altogether: it looks at the tree's own structural condition and whether it poses a risk to people or property nearby. You may need one, both, or neither, but don't assume a subsidence report tells you anything about whether your tree is safe, or vice versa.
Third, if roots are lifting a drive, cracking a path or getting into a drain, that's frustrating, but it's generally a civil or property matter rather than a safety issue, more about boundaries, damage and who's liable than about the tree itself being dangerous. It's a separate conversation to the one above about structural risk, and usually a different professional altogether.
There's no rush to "deal with" a tree just because it's new to you. Get informed, get a proper assessment from a qualified arborist if you have genuine concerns, and avoid booking work simply because the tree feels unfamiliar. Most trees are better served by patience than by a chainsaw in year one.
Simon Forster is the Principal Arborist at The Tree Fella, a family-run, Arb Approved Contractor and TrustMark Registered Business providing tree care across South Shields and the North East. Find out more at thetreefella.co.uk.
