My name’s Graham. I’ve spent close to thirty years around building sites, gardens and storm clean-ups in Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty, and I’ve patched up enough people — and enough half-finished jobs — to have strong opinions about tree work. My daughter shifted up to Papamoa a few years back, and the…

I had a call out to a place in Lynmore a while back that sums up almost every driveway-and-tree job I get around Rotorua. A homeowner had a liquidambar that had shoved their concrete driveway up into a ridge you could genuinely trip over, and they wanted the tree gone that same afternoon — as…

A cousin of mine bought a place out in Bethlehem, on the edge of Tauranga, with a couple of big established trees on the section. First thing he wanted to do was drop one of them for a bit more sun on the deck. I’ve spent enough years around Tauranga properties and building sites to…

Kia ora, I’m Kate — I’ve been writing about home ownership out here in Papamoa, Bay of Plenty for a few years now, mostly because I keep learning things the hard way. When my partner and I went house-hunting, one place we loved had two enormous gum trees in the back yard. I stood under…

My aunt in Otumoetai has kept the same griselinia hedge along her front boundary for years, and pretty much every time I visit she asks me the same two questions: when should this get cut, and how often does it actually need doing? I’m no professional gardener — I’ve just spent a few seasons keeping…

My mate rang me the morning after Cyclone Gabrielle came through, before I’d even got the jug on. Half a mature liquidambar had come down across his back fence in Mount Maunganui, one big limb was hung up in the power line, and he wanted to know if he could just grab the chainsaw and…