Palm cleaning in Cape Town
Dead fronds, seed pods and debris stripped by climbers, not from ladders. A health job for the palm and a safety job for whatever is under it.
- Fully insured
- Written price first
- Waste removed
A skirt of dead fronds is a fire and falling-object risk, and a heavy seed head lets go without warning. We climb the palm, strip what is dead, cut the seed pods and take everything away.
A ladder reaches the bottom of the skirt on a small palm and nothing else. A climber works at the crown, sees what is dead, cuts cleanly and lowers the heavy pieces instead of letting them fall on the paving, the pool or the car.
What is included
How the job runs
Who it is for
Palm species we clean in Cape Town gardens
Different palms need different work, and most Cape Town gardens have one of three:
- Mexican fan palms (Washingtonia). Very tall and fast-growing. Left alone they hold a thick skirt of dead fronds down the trunk, which is a fire risk and a home for rats and pigeons.
- Canary Island date palms. Heavy, with long sharp spines at the base of every frond and large bunches of orange fruit. The spines can cause nasty puncture wounds, so this is not a ladder job.
- Queen palms. Drop masses of orange fruit onto paving and pools, and seed themselves into every bed nearby.
Why we do not over-prune
A palm feeds itself through its green fronds. Cutting the crown back to a few spikes (sometimes called a hurricane cut) weakens the palm and can make the trunk narrow at the top. We remove fronds that are dead, dying or hanging below horizontal, plus the seed and fruit stalks, and leave the healthy green crown in place.
When a palm needs to come out: palm tree removal
Sometimes cleaning is not enough. A palm that is dead, leaning badly, growing into power lines or lifting the paving may need to be removed. Palms are taken down from the top in short sections, because the trunk is heavy and fibrous and cannot be dropped in a small garden. We lower every piece, take all the waste away and can grind the stump below ground afterwards.
We clean and remove palms across the city, from Bloubergstrand to Somerset West. Large palm jobs often go with tree removal or a general garden refuse removal on the same visit.
Frequently asked
Send a photo of the palm.
Free site visit, written price, no obligation. Fully insured.
