For Tarmac
Tree safety inspection across a historic parkland
Maydencroft Limited was commissioned by Tarmac to undertake a Tree Safety Inspection of all trees within the high-risk zones of Panshanger Park.
Panshanger Park is located 5 km west of Welwyn Garden City. The park is Grade II listed, designed by Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton with over 200 acres of publicly-accessible land. It comprises a range of different habitats including wetlands, grassland reedbeds and mature broadleaved woodland, of which some areas are ancient semi-natural with over 800 veteran trees.
Risk zoning to facilitate tree management
A previous survey carried out by Maydencroft allocated risk zones across the site to facilitate future tree inspections. On this occasion only trees within the high-risk zones were inspected. We recommended that trees within high-risk zones are inspected on a frequency of 18 months; this allows the trees to be viewed in different seasons which can aid the identification of particular problems, such as the emergence of annual fungal fruiting bodies and crown defects.
Tree management software enabled our surveyors to accurately record location using GPS. Tree data and tree condition was then entered into the software onsite, with trees requiring remedial works allocated a works priority timeframe in which works are to be carried out.
Sensitive mitigation of veteran trees
A number of trees were identified as requiring remedial works, which included mulching around the rooting space of a veteran tree and redirecting pedestrian footpaths away from the Root Protection Area to reduce the harmful effects of compaction for a tree with an already reduced level of vigour due to its age.
