redg wrote:
Can anyone tell me( sensibly!) what they think of these quotes in terms
of whether or not they are reasonable, exhorbitant etc. Thanks. I am
still waiting for another quote.......

It seems to me they are definitely encouraging you to have them do the
job! There's a lot of gloom and doom in their analysis of the
situation. Is it a fact that your leylandiis ARE causing problems NOW?

The other thing I would be wary about is their seeming to tell you that
complete removal of a tree in one session will not cause problems. I
once had an extremely tall and large sycamore tree removed from a
position 15 feet away from the back of my house. Whether it was because
I had an insurance company involved, monitoring things, or not, the very
professional tree surgeon (recommended to me by the the local council's
"head of trees") insisted that the tree had to be reduced in size
slowly, over the course of 18 months. They visited three times. To
have removed it in one fell swoop would have been to cause the roots to
behave in such a way that would have caused problems to the foundations
of the house.

My advice: get in touch with your local council, get through to the
"Head Ranger" or similar, the person in charge of maintaining the
council's trees. He'll know what he's talking about. And he'll no
doubt be able to put you in touch with a reliable private tree surgeon.
Very often councils use these tree surgeons themselves.

Eddy.