A local outfit, doing it properly
PG Gardening & Tree Surgeon is a gardening and tree surgery business based in Blackburn, working across Lancashire. Everything on this page is something we can stand behind.
How we work
The job starts with somebody coming to look at it. Not a price down the phone, not a guess from a photograph on a message — someone standing in the garden working out how the tree comes down, where the waste goes and what is underneath it. That takes fifteen minutes and it is the only way to give you a number that does not change on the day.
After that it is simple. You get a fixed price for clearly described work. If you want to think about it, think about it — nobody will ring you three times that week. If you go ahead, we turn up when we said we would, do what was quoted, and take the mess with us.
What we will tell you
Some of this trade runs on people not knowing what they are looking at. We would rather be the ones who explain it:
- When a tree does not need removing, and reduction or thinning would do the job for less money.
- When the work needs council consent or six weeks' notice before it can legally start.
- How far a hedge can be cut back before it stops growing back — particularly leylandii, which does not forgive it.
- When a surface is too far gone for washing to improve, before you pay for washing it.
- When the job is not ours. Roofs, drains and knotweed treatment all belong to somebody else, and we will say so.
Rubbish and where it goes
Everything we cut leaves with us. You are not left with a pile of brash at the side of the house to deal with yourself, and the site is swept before we go.
Safety
Tree work is genuinely dangerous, and it is dangerous for whoever is stood underneath as well as the person in the tree. Areas get cordoned, drop zones get kept clear, and if we ask you to keep the children and the dog inside for an hour, that is why. If a job cannot be done safely with the kit and the people we have, we will not attempt it — we will tell you what it actually needs.
Our qualifications and insurance
Two things worth knowing before anybody starts a saw in your garden:
- £2 million public liability insurance with Hiscox, in force to 6 March 2027. Cover is in place before anybody sets foot in your garden, so if something goes wrong it is our policy that answers for it and not yours. The certificate is below.
- NPTC certificates of competence, and you can read them yourself. Chainsaw maintenance and crosscutting, felling small trees, climbing, aerial rescue, and cutting from a rope and harness aloft. The certificates are printed below rather than described. Not somebody who bought a saw and had a go.
Neither of those is a small thing. An uninsured contractor who drops a limb through your conservatory leaves you to claim on your own policy, and an unticketed one climbing your tree is a problem you inherit.
Both are held by the people actually doing the work, not borrowed from somebody who is not on site.
The paperwork itself
Most trade sites say "fully qualified and insured" and leave it there. Ours are below — the insurance certificate, and the tickets with their awarding body, units and dates. The tickets are held by Connor Parker, who does the tree work. Between them they cover the whole job on a tree: getting up it, cutting from a rope and harness once you are there, getting somebody down if it goes wrong, and processing what comes off. Tap any one to read it full size.
Hiscox · 7 March 2026 to 6 March 2027
£2,000,000 each and every claim.
NPTC · 1 June 2004
CS30.1 chainsaw maintenance · CS30.2 on-site preparation and basic crosscutting · CS31 felling and processing small trees, 200–380 mm
NPTC · 7 June 2004
Climb a tree · Conduct aerial rescue. Known as CS38 before it was accredited.
NPTC · 28 September 2004
Cutting while roped into the tree itself. This is the one that separates a tree surgeon from somebody with a ladder.
Lantra Awards · 19 August 2004
A one-day course in assessing risk before work starts.
Our guarantee
If you are not happy with any part of the work, tell us before we leave — or ring within 14 days — and we will come back and put it right at no charge. That covers the work we carried out. It does not cover new growth, storm damage after we have left, or plants that fail to take. This is on top of your legal rights, not instead of them.
Four things we are not flexible about
Turning up
If we say a day, we mean it. If the weather stops us — and in Lancashire it does — you get a phone call, not silence.
The price
The quoted price is the price. It changes only if you ask for extra work, and then you are told what it costs before it is done.
Clearing up
Blown down, raked off, gates shut. A job is not finished because the cutting has stopped.
The law
Protected trees, nesting birds, waste carriage. We do not cut corners on any of it, and we will not be talked into it.
Blackburn and beyond
We are based in Blackburn and most days we are somewhere within half an hour of it: Darwen, Accrington, Rishton, Great Harwood, Oswaldtwistle, up into the Ribble Valley around Whalley, Langho and Clitheroe, across to Burnley and Padiham, and down towards Chorley and Preston.
Working the same patch for a while has practical value. You learn which council covers which street for tree work, which roads you cannot get a chipper down, and which estates have shared access at the back and which do not.
Get in touch
Quotes are free and there is no obligation attached to asking.
Want a price on your garden?
Tell us what needs doing and we will come and look. Quotes are free, there is no obligation, and you get a straight answer on what the job actually involves.