We have two kinds of weather in Singapore, hot and wet, or hot and wetter. In our concrete jungle, most street trees serve the important purpose of providing shade and lowering temperatures. Ah. Shade. The bigger the tree the better right? Not quite. Sure, a large tree looks beautiful if properly maintained, but an poorly maintained large tree, grown in the middle of a city is both a hazard and an eyesore. Source: CSK Landscape Services (S) Pte Ltd Provides zero shade It goes without saying that large trees are not as easy to maintain as smaller ones. Sure, parks need their large, majestic tr ..read more

Singapore is mostly boring, and that is a good thing. Trains and buses arrive on time, elevators work, and drinking water straight out of a tap is generally safe. However, when it comes to town council tree management, there is space for improvement. On 27th Aug 2020, our principal arborist saw fungal fruiting bodies and a crack on a tree. These are clear signs of imminent failure. So he did the right thing and contacted the town council using OneService. To their credit the town council replied in a timely manner. Source: CSK Landscape Services (S.) Pte Ltd Red circle around the fungal fruit ..read more

As with tree failures that we have not visited, here is a disclaimer. Disclaimer: The arborists writing this article have not physically visited the site. All observations are based on publicly available photos on Google Maps, Google Street View, and news reports. All comments should be taken with a heaping pile of salt. A tree fell over near Toa Payoh Lorong 5 Block 68, on 13th Dec 2020, at around 7am. The owners of several vehicles struck by the falling tree were majorly inconvenienced, but luckily nobody was injured. The Straits Times reported that a motorcycle owner, who had his vehicle da ..read more

Imagine the biggest tree you can. Well maybe not the biggest tree you CAN imagine, our imaginations are pretty amazing after all. Source: Germanic Mythology The Norse gave us a tree that connected the universe Let’s be a little less ambitious, and stick with the largest tree that you can find…in Singapore. A heritage tree will do, while they do not compare to the largest monster trees in the world, they are large enough to make our point. Lush, strong, majestic, and much like someone jaded with life, completely dead on the inside. Source: NParks It’s hard to tell, but this tree is sick of al ..read more

Source: Tan Kok Leyong Nursery Sdn. Bhd. I was recently surprised by a friend asking for advice on buying a tree. It was literally the first time anyone had asked me for tree shopping advice. My first thought was, I should tell them to hire us. Followed shortly by, So this is what selling insurance to your friends feels like. Nevertheless, I gave them a few words of advice for free, and left them to their own devices. I would like to share those few words here. Without further ado, here are 5 things to look for when buying a tree. 1. Planting location Take a look at where the new tree will be ..read more

I was recently sent an image of a tree with stilt roots and long pointed leaves. It looked something like this. Source: Wikipedia Not the actual picture sent to me. The sender asked, “What tree is this?” And I told them, “Oh, it’s a Pandanus of some kind. I can’t tell you the species from your picture, but it is related to pandan you find in food.” In hindsight, the next question was inevitable. “Is pandan a tree?” asked the sender. Good question. And after a little bit of research, yes. The humble pandan, used in Southeast Asia for its flavour, and sometimes as an insect repellent, is in fac ..read more

They say that failure is the mother of success, and tree failures are no different. There are lessons to be learnt from every tree failure. But before we begin, here is a disclaimer. Disclaimer: The arborists writing this article have not physically visited the site. All observations are based on publicly available photos on Google Maps, Google Street View, and newspaper reports. We will strive to give the benefit of the doubt without naming any parties involved. Remember, everything always looks clear in hindsight, and the important thing is to improve moving forwards. So without further ado ..read more

If you tried searching that question on the internet, the most common answer would be, “Well it depends on the definition of a tree…” Oh that’s easy. I’ll just search, “definition of a tree” and…Oh dear, what are these long strings of gibberish? Source: Google You know the definition is still being discussed if they use words like ‘some’ and ‘typically’. Why is a tree so hard to define? Show a 3-year-old a picture of a tree, and they can tell you what it is. So why is there no single definition for a tree? And if there isn’t, then is a palm a tree? There are already articles out there detaili ..read more

You may see workers removing most of the leaves on a tree here in Singapore, and leaving ugly bare stubs. This form of pruning is called topping, and we have discussed some of the reasons why this happens. In this post, we would like to share with you why it is bad, both for the tree and for people. But wait, we hear you ask. Drawing an imaginary line around the shape of what you would like the tree to look like, and pruning along that line is surely the right way to do it? After all, we trim bushes and hedges in the same way, and trees are plants too. Source: Shiawasae Home Not the right way ..read more

One of the many questions asked of arborists in Singapore is, “How old is that tree?” The short answer is, “We don’t know.” The slightly longer answer will be, “Ask the people who planted it.” But wait, we hear you ask, why don’t we just cut it down and count its rings? Everybody knows counting a tree’s rings is the way to find out its age right? There are ways to estimate a tree’s rings without cutting it down, but as much as we would like to count them, they will not give us a tree’s age here in Singapore. Source: CSK Landscape Services How old are you? The fancy word for dating tree rings ..read more