Not every palm needs to go. A well kept foxtail, bangalow or alexandra palm is one of the better things you can have on a Gold Coast block, and a canal front lined with tidy palms looks the way people imagined it would when they bought the place.
They just need cleaning, and that is a job almost nobody enjoys doing at height off a ladder.
Dead fronds off. The brown skirt hanging under the crown. Dead fronds are heavy, they harbour rats and wasps, and when one lets go from eight metres up it lands with real force.
Seed pods and flower stalks off. This is the part people forget, and it is the part that matters most. Seed pods are where the mess comes from: fruit dropping onto pavers and pool surrounds, staining concrete, attracting rats and flying foxes, and self-seeding into your garden beds and the reserve next door. Taking the pods before they ripen stops all of it.
Trunk cleaned where the species allows. Some palms shed their old frond bases cleanly. Others hold onto them and need them cut back for a tidy finish.
Everything cleaned up. Fronds and pods go into the chipper and leave with us.
There is a habit around here of stripping palms back to a handful of vertical fronds, sometimes called hurricane cutting. It looks tidy for a fortnight.
The problem is that a palm cannot grow new leaves from anywhere except the central growing point at the top. Strip too many green fronds and you have taken away the food factory, so the palm slows down, thins out and often goes into decline. It also makes the crown less able to handle wind, not more, which is the opposite of what people think they are buying.
We take the dead and dying fronds, the pods and anything genuinely hazardous, and we leave the healthy green canopy alone. The palm stays healthy and looks like a palm.
For most Gold Coast palms, once or twice a year keeps them tidy and stops seed getting away.
Cocos palms fruit heavily and need doing more often if you are keeping them, which is one of several reasons a lot of people eventually take them out instead.
Canal front and beachside palms take more wind and salt, so they shed more and generally want the more frequent end of that range.
Most of our palm cleaning is on a schedule. We agree how often, we contact you when it is due, and it just happens.
That works particularly well for body corporates and strata complexes with rows of palms around pools, driveways and common areas, where fronds dropping into a pool or across a footpath is a real safety issue for the committee. Scheduled visits mean it never gets to the point where someone complains.
It also suits owners who are not always here. Holiday homes, investment properties and canal front houses that sit empty part of the year still need the pods off before they drop.
Most of our palm cleaning is on a schedule. We agree how often, we contact you when it is due, and it just happens.
That works particularly well for body corporates and strata complexes with rows of palms around pools, driveways and common areas, where fronds dropping into a pool or across a footpath is a real safety issue for the committee. Scheduled visits mean it never gets to the point where someone complains.
It also suits owners who are not always here. Holiday homes, investment properties and canal front houses that sit empty part of the year still need the pods off before they drop.
You get a booking confirmation, then live tracking on the morning so you know when the crew is arriving. You do not need to be home for palm cleaning, as long as we have access.
The climber goes up with spikes or from an elevated platform, depending on the palm and the site. Fronds and pods come down into a controlled drop zone, get chipped and get loaded out.
Then we clean up. Pool surrounds get blown down, garden beds get checked for fallen fruit, and the driveway gets swept. On a canal block we take care that nothing goes into the water.
Palm cleaning is priced on height, how many palms, how long since the last clean and the access.
A row of six done together is far better value than one at a time, because the setup is most of the job. First cleans after several years of neglect take longer than a maintenance visit, and after that, regular visits are quick and cheap.
Our team rate is $660 per hour over an eight hour day, and most palm cleaning is quoted as a fixed price or as a set rate per visit for scheduled work.
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Once or twice a year suits most Gold Coast palms. Cocos palms and exposed canal front palms usually need it more often because they fruit and shed more.
Yes. We take dead fronds, seed pods and hazards, and leave the healthy green canopy. Over-stripping a palm damages it, so we do not do it.
Yes, and this is the important part. Pods are what create the mess, the rats and the seedlings. Removing them before they ripen is the whole point of the job.
Yes. We do scheduled palm maintenance for body corporates and strata across the Coast, with the work documented each visit
