The Tree Fella®

28/09/2026

⚠️ PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING ⚠️

We've built something dangerously scrollable.

It starts in the sunshine at the top of a tree and doesn't stop until you hit the roots. 121 questions. 19 diagrams you can poke. Absolutely no celebrity gossip.

Side effects may include:
🌳 Knowing why leaves go orange
🌳 Explaining sap to your kids at teatime
🌳 Correcting your mate who reckons roots go as deep as the tree is tall (they don't)
🌳 An irrational urge to put wood chip round everything

It's written so a five-year-old can follow it, with the proper grown-up words underneath for everyone who's pretending they already knew.

Put the news down. Doom-scroll a tree instead 👇

https://learn.thetreefella.co.uk/

Leaves, sap, rings, roots, fungi and the four walls a tree builds round a wound. 19 diagrams to poke at. Warning: highly scrollable.

19/09/2026

A sycamore on a site managed for public use had developed a significant crack where one of the stems joined the main trunk. That stem had to come off — there were people underneath it.

The straightforward option is a clean cut flush to the trunk, leaving a flat wound. Job done, nobody would have questioned it.

We took a different approach. We left a length of the stem standing, well clear of the main trunk, and finished it using fracture pruning — cuts shaped to mimic the way a limb tears naturally in high wind. The torn fibres and rough, broken surface let the wood decay slowly from the outside in, the way it would if the tree had shed the limb itself.

Why bother? Because standing deadwood is one of the richest habitats in any tree. Invertebrates colonise the decaying timber, and the birds follow them in for lunch. Features like this normally take decades to appear, and usually only on old veteran trees.

If a limb has to come off anyway, you may as well leave something useful behind. Our client was happy to go with it, and the tree carries on doing a job for everything else living in it.

18/09/2026

Two insects in this photo, not one.

The white rice-grain shapes are male euonymus scale. The smaller brown pear-shaped ones are the females. Both are sap feeders, sitting under a waxy shield that protects them from most contact sprays — which is why scale is so hard to shift once it's established.

And this one is well established. Look at the stem: that's not one season's worth, that's years of it. By that stage the plant is being drained faster than it can recover, and the yellowing leaves tell you how that ends.

This hedge is past saving. We're back to remove it and replant soon!

If you spot white flecking on euonymus stems, deal with it early. Once it looks like this, you've lost the argument.

18/09/2026

Our climbing arborist, top of an ash, Tyne Bridge behind him.

This was the section fell at the churchyard — severe ash dieback, taken down while the stem was still sound enough to climb. Anchored into the main stem, working down in sections.

And yes, spikes. Removals only, before anyone asks.

Not a bad office for a Tuesday.

18/09/2026

Same site. Three trees. Two came down, one stayed.

The whitebeam had heavy deadwood over a heritage walk route. Empty churchyard, no problem — but stop a tour group underneath it and it is. The client kept the walk, we cleared the deadwood, the tree stays.

The two ash had severe dieback, so we section felled them while they were still safe to climb. Give it another year and climbing them wouldn't be an option — it'd be a MEWP job, and a MEWP isn't getting in between graves on a site like this.

So the choice wasn't do it now or do it later. It was do it now, while it could still be done affordably.

We don't turn up with a felling list 🌳

10/09/2026

27/08/2026

What do the first five years of an arb career actually look like?

Andy Bradley reached five years with The Tree Fella in July this year, and his training record with an Arb Approved Contractor provides a useful map for anyone starting out.
He came to arboriculture after serving in the British Forces, with no tree work qualifications or experience. He studied Level 3 Arboriculture at East Durham College (Houghall), funded through an Advanced Learner Loan — a funding route many adult career-changers aren’t aware of.

Through college, he completed his chainsaw maintenance and cross-cutting qualification in February 2021, followed by his small tree felling qualification in March. He started with The Tree Fella in July of the same year.

He went on to complete his tree climbing and aerial rescue course in May 2022, around ten months into the job and as part of his ongoing college studies. Tree inspection, QTRA, woodchipper, stump grinder, Chapter 8 and MEWP 1b/3b followed over the years that followed.

With a whole range of training undertaken during his five years in arb, along with 80 hours of CPD in the last year alone, Andy continues to develop his skills and knowledge.
Well done on five years’ service, Andy — we hope there are many more to come.

11/08/2026

Removal of a eucalyptus. Thank you Rebecca Yates from South Shields! Get your free quote at www.thetreefellane.co.uk/free-quote 😊

03/08/2026

Nice little feature in the Newcastle Magazine celebrating our ten year anniversary!

The Tree Fella was founded by Simon Forster in 2016, offering tree pruning, tree removal, hedge trimming and arboricultural surveys to customers across South Shields and the wider region. Ten years on, the business has become an Arb Approved Contractor and TrustMark Registered Business, with Simon a...

28/07/2026

🌳 We're pleased to confirm The Tree Fella® has passed our Arboricultural Association reassessment and remains an ArbAC Approved Contractor — 3 years running. ✅

Approved Contractor status isn't a badge you buy. It's an independent audit of how we actually work: technical competence, site safety, staff training and qualifications, customer care, and business practice. 📋 Every few years an assessor comes out, checks our paperwork and watches us work on site.

For you, that means the company in your garden or on your grounds has been checked by someone other than us. 🤝 Qualified, insured, properly equipped, and working to recognised industry standards — not just claiming to.

🏅 Alongside ArbAC we also hold TrustMark, QTRA, SSIP and DBS accreditation.

It was a stress-free process. Knowing we put in place every day what's needed on assessment day is a great place to be. 😌

👏 Thanks to the team for the standard they hold every day, not just on assessment day.