St Leonards
Tree removal in St Leonards
Tree removal, lopping and stump grinding in St Leonards, for gardens between the bluff and the Salt Lagoon.
Tree work in St Leonards
A sandy bluff, a salt lagoon and street lightwoods
The state's archived list of significant geological sites, drawn up in the late eighties, describes two very different kinds of ground either side of the jetty. To the south, The Bluff at Miller Point is an active marine cliff cut into mottled red and brown ferruginous sands and sandy clays, the most southerly coastal exposure of the Moorabool Viaduct Sand on the Bellarine Peninsula. To the north, the list describes the Salt Lagoon as a large, often dry, coastal lagoon with a clay and salt floor. Clay that floods and dries tends to keep roots shallow, so a tree on the low ground near the lagoon is worth checking for lean after a wet winter.
Under St Leonards, the City of Greater Geelong's street tree records list 292 of the 2,360 lightwoods, more than under any other suburb. A lightwood on a nature strip is a City street tree, so pruning or removing one is a request to the City rather than a private booking, and a job on the block behind it keeps the chipper, outriggers and stump grinder off its roots.
For the St Leonards Golf Club land, the planning scheme's development plan schedule calls for a street network with limited access points to Harvey Road and no direct driveway access to lots, to protect vegetation within the road's Vegetation Protection Overlay. On lots created under that plan, trucks, chippers and elevated platforms come in from the internal streets rather than across the roadside, and work on the roadside trees themselves is a matter for the City.
Sources: The Bluff (Miller Point) geological site, St Leonards, Victorian Resources Online (archived) (retrieved 15/10/2026); Salt Lagoon geological site, St Leonards, Victorian Resources Online (archived) (retrieved 15/10/2026); Trees dataset, City of Greater Geelong (Geelong Data Exchange), lightwoods (retrieved 15/10/2026); Schedule 19 to the Development Plan Overlay, St Leonards Golf Club, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 15/10/2026); Schedule to the Heritage Overlay, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 13/10/2026); St Leonards Primary School (HO1573), Victorian Heritage Database (retrieved 15/10/2026); Schedule 32 to the Development Plan Overlay, St Leonards Growth Area 2, Greater Geelong Planning Scheme (retrieved 15/10/2026)
Services in St Leonards
Big cypresses, iron-rich sand and lagoon clay
Tree removal
Large cypresses and gums taken down in stages, crown first, where a house or a fence sits below them.
Tree lopping
Limbs cut back from a roof, a gutter or a shed, after the lot's overlays and any heritage listing have been looked up.
Stump grinding
Stumps ground out on the iron-rich sands near the bluff, where gravel can blunt the teeth, or worked slowly through the sticky clay by the lagoon.
What it costs: tree removal cost, stump grinding cost
Compared: removal, lopping or pruning, stump grinding or stump removal, council tree rules compared
How it works
From the first call to a clear garden
Nothing happens without a written quote you have agreed to.
Tell us about the tree
Call or send the form with the tree and what is worrying you.
A contractor comes to see it
A local tree contractor looks at the tree, the access and whatever sits underneath it, because a quote off a photo misses the things that change the job.
A written quote
The quote sets out the scope, what happens to the timber and the stump, and the date. It is the contractor's quote, and nothing starts until you accept it.
The work and the clean up
On the day the tree is dealt with as quoted, the green waste leaves on the truck and the lawn is raked.
St Leonards questions
School cypresses and growth area red gums
Can the cypresses at the primary school be lopped?
Only with the City's approval: in the Greater Geelong heritage overlay schedule, St Leonards Primary School is the only individually listed place in the town where tree controls apply, and those controls require a planning permit to remove, destroy or lop a tree there. Its heritage citation, drawn from a Bellarine heritage study of the mid nineties, describes the school with mature cypress trees on the south boundary. If those cypresses still stand, they carry heavy limbs and wide root plates, so any work on them is planned with the school as well as the City.
Are old red gums kept when growth land is subdivided?
In one growth area, the planning scheme asks for that where appropriate. Its development plan rules say subdivision should retain scattered remnant river red gums, drooping sheoaks and vegetation patches of high arboricultural value in future road or open space reserves, and a permit application there must include an arboricultural assessment of the native trees. A gum or sheoak on one of those lots may be marked for retention, so its removal or lopping is raised with the City before a date is set.
