Palm Removal & Cleaning

Cocos palms are a weed, and that changes the maths

The cocos palm, Syagrus romanzoffiana, is a declared weed across much of the Illawarra. It seeds prolifically, the fruit spreads into bushland via flying foxes and birds, the fronds are heavy enough to hurt someone, and the crown harbours rats.

The practical consequence is that cocos palms are generally exempt from council tree protection, so removal is usually straightforward. And because annual frond and seed pod cleaning adds up, removing one cocos palm often costs less over five years than maintaining it. We will give you both numbers and let you decide.

Other palms we work on

• Canary Island date palm - enormous, extremely heavy, vicious spines at the frond base, and slow going. Removal is a serious job, not a quick one.
• Bangalow palm - a local native and generally worth keeping. Usually just needs dead fronds taken off.
• Golden cane and clumping palms - straightforward to thin, remove or reduce.
• Washingtonia - the tall skinny ones. Dead frond skirts are a real fire and rodent issue, particularly on bushland-backed blocks.

The access problem

Palms have a habit of being planted in exactly the worst place: beside a pool, hard against a boundary fence, or under a service line. There is no way to drop a 6 metre frond-laden crown into a 3 metre gap, so the crown comes off in pieces on ropes and the trunk comes down in sections. On coastal blocks around Thirroul, Austinmer and Shellharbour that is most of the palm work we do.