Tree reduction advice and cost

[Nils]

I recently moved into a house with some nice old trees in the garden, almost all of them ash. I like having them but unfortunately they are creating a lot of shade. So I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get all of their crowns reduced a bit and have two of the smaller ones and maybe a bigger one felled. What do you think would be a realistic price for this? And would be worth trying to sell the wood from the larger tree? This is in the South.

 

 I have put up a few photos here:

Trees

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[Stubby]

20 hours ago, Sviatoslav Tulin said:

As i see from photos no dieback on them yet ,so if it was my garden ,i remove biggest one ,all others left as it is ,its only my opinion.

I see what appears to be a little . That's how they all start .  Does not mean it will die though . There are trees near me in rows were there are 2 or 3 with very obvious die back and trees either side with no or very little signs  .

[Khriss]

Also, dont forget you can plant trees this year to replace those you may lose in future, k

[Nils]

Thank you for your help everybody!

 

An arborist came by to have a look now - he said the trees also have various issues with how they're growing and are not really suitable for the space even if there was no ash dieback. So it looks like the plan will be to fell the 5-6 smaller ash trees and crown lift the 4 big ones, with the expectation that they'll also need to be felled in the next few years.  We'd then look into planting some more suitable trees in autumn to replace them. It's a shame about the nice old trees but he seemed to know his stuff, so I am inclined to trust his judgement, even if the whole thing is getting a bit more expensive than I had hoped...

 

[Dan Maynard]

He may be right, ash can be prone to included bark unions but it would be sensible to get a second opinion and quote just to be sure you're in the ball park cost wise.

[Nils]

Yeah, I might try getting another opinion. For what it's worth, he quoted 1,600 for felling the trees and doing the four crown lifts. Does that sound about right to you?

[Khriss]

14 hours ago, Nils said:

Yeah, I might try getting another opinion. For what it's worth, he quoted 1,600 for felling the trees and doing the four crown lifts. Does that sound about right to you?

Hmmm thats a good price, he got references / satisfactory reports?  K

[Dan Maynard]

Crown lift could involve climbing the trees and rigging branches that are over the neighbours, or just stand on the ground with a pole saw, so difficult to say without knowing the spec and of course usual proviso about obstacles and access to get stuff out.

It sounds ballpark right though, you've got 10 trees to work on so it's only £160 a tree.