When a overgrown Poplar tree, at the former Kettering Town Football Ground, on Rockingham road in Kettering, shed a major limb in 2016 the landowner looked to us for advice on how to deal with the remaining trees. These trees had previously been topped and had serious regrowth with each tree having major decay at the union of this regrowth. After a report was commissioned it was decided to fell the trees to reduce any further harm.
But how do you remove 10 very mature poplar trees over a main road through Kettering? A single lane road closure would not give adequate room for us to work and would cause to much traffic chaos. Fortunately, our close working relationship with Northamptonshire Highways meant that we could liaise with them to come up with a solution. They gave us one day to close the road to enable us to fell all 10 trees! A tall order but challenge excepted.
We utilised a 35 meter mobile work platform to make accessing the trees easy, and on a sunny June weekend we set to work. We were allocated a Sunday to close the road so started work the day before, clearing any branches leaning onto private property. Using our smaller digger with brash grab we were able to quickly process any branches moving them out of the working area and chip them through our large Bandit chipper capable of speedily chipping limbs up to 12 inch diameter.
With troublesome limbs removed we were ready for the road closure. We liaised with local residents and highways and we started early doors removing the trees in safe sized sections from the access platform, completing all the works in our allotted day. The timber was stacked in the area behind the trees to be removed in the following days. A tree surgery project very well executed.
