Last Updated on January, 2025
Have you ever wondered what happens to all those branches and logs when arborists finish their job? Turns out, there’s a goldmine hidden in those wood chips. Have you thought of getting your hands on some of those chips?
If yes, you’re lucky. In this article, we’re going to explore exactly how you can get free wood chippings from tree surgeons, how to use them, and all the benefits they can bring to your garden or landscaping project.
If you’re ready, let’s get started.
Quick Summary
- You can get free wood chips by contacting local tree-trimming companies, using free mulch programs, or through websites that connect arborists with those who need chips. Some utility companies also offer free wood chips.
- Offering goods (like vegetables or meals) in exchange for chip drops can make your listing more appealing. Providing detailed descriptions and photos of your tip site also increases your chances of being selected.
- Wood chips can be used for mulching, landscaping, biomass production, and animal bedding. However, it’s important to avoid chips from certain trees like walnut and ensure aged chippings are used to prevent diseases or mould.
How to Get Free Wood Chips From Tree Surgeons?
You don’t have to spend a lot if you want wood chips for your garden mulch, driveway, or any other purpose. While you want chips, tree surgeons need a way to dispose of them. Hence, there are many ways to get free chips. Let’s look at them.
- Contact a local tree-trimming company
All the tree companies need to get rid of wood chips, so they deliver them for free. You can call your local tree trimming company and inquire whether they deliver free wood chips.
Some tree companies have websites where you can list your tip sites along with your contact information, address, and other details. Whenever the tree service is working nearby, they’ll load the wood chip at your location by a truck.
- Free mulch programs
Some cities conduct free mulch programs where arborists are allowed to dump wood chips into a particular place. If your city has a wood chip dumping site, you can haul wood chippings for free from there.
- Websites
Many websites are designed to connect people who want free chippings with arborists who want a site to dump chips.
If you have a dump site, you can sign up and create your listing. Generally, there are 3 listing options for you to choose from:
Free tip sites: When you list a free tip site, you allow the tree service to drop wood chips at your site for free, which means you get free chippings.
Pay-to-tip sites: Most waste transfer companies list their sites as pay-to-tip sites. These companies make their living by converting green waste into usable products. They charge the tree service to drop the wood chip piles at their site and convert them into biomass or other usable products.
Tip sites that pay: If you urgently need wood chips and can’t find them for free, you can list your drop site under this. This means you’ll offer money to the arborist to deliver chips to your site.
- Utility companies
The electric company in your area might cut trees often to prevent disruptions to power lines. Hence, they’ll have tons of wood chips. You can check with your local utility companies. Many of them will be glad to deliver free wood chips.
Steps to Create a Tip Site Listing to Get Chips From Tree Surgeons
How exactly do you create a tip site listing? Many websites allow you to create tip site listings, and the process may vary between them. However, below are some common steps you have to follow.
- Go to each tip site listing website, and research the services provided and the location where they deliver. Look for customer testimonials and find out the website that will work best for you.
- Sign up for the service by providing the necessary information. Most of the sites are free to sign up.
- Create your listing. Include all the necessary information including your name, house location, contact details, etc. and make it stand out from the other listings.
- After listing on the site, YOUR JOB IS DONE. Now, you must wait till an arborist contacts you to discuss further and get the wood chips dropped at your site.
Some Points to Make Your Tip Site Stand Out
Tree surgeons will have lots of tip site options. Hence, you must make your listing stand out for them to select your site to dump the chips. How would you do that?
- Check out the other competing sites in your area. If most of them are offering money to the tree service for the chip drop, you must go with that option, too. Listing yours as a free site or a site where the tree service has to offer money would lower your ranking.
If you live in a remote area and there are not a lot of competing sites, then you can list your site as free.
- Be creative. It’s not necessary to spend money all the time. You can also offer goods in exchange for the chip drop service.
For example, some people offer freshly grown vegetables from their garden in exchange for chips. You can also provide a beer or a meal to the guys who drop chips in exchange for the chip drop. These creative ideas would attract the tree service to choose your yard to load chips.
- When creating the listing, you’ll see a space to describe your tip site. Don’t leave this blank, instead, use it effectively.
Describe your tipping area briefly, and make it interesting. To make the description more personable, mention why you need wood chips. For example, you can mention it’s for your driveway or to decorate your garden, etc. Include a clear picture of your tipping site.
Having a description helps you to attract tree surgeons to your listing. This also helps them ensure your yard is suitable to dump the chips.
If you don’t describe your site, the tree service may expect it to be large and bring multiple loads of chips only to find out that your site is not big enough to unload all of them. This is a waste of their time and energy.
How Wood Chips are Created and What Do Tree Surgeons Do With Them?
Now you are clear on how to get free wood chips. Let’s discuss how they are created.
Brushwood and timber are used to create wood chips. Brushwood are the small branches or pieces of debris formed during tree surgery, crown reduction, and crown thinning.
Timber is the large piece of log that you get after cutting down a whole tree or if the tree falls due to environmental conditions.
The branches and other debris are put into a wood chipper to convert them into wood chips. The quality of the chipper will decide the quality of the material.
Usually, brushwood is converted to wood chips on-site and then transported to the dump site. Timber is taken to other sites and converted to wood chippings.
Most companies look for suitable sites to dump wood chips resulting from tree cuttings. Many companies have websites that allow people to list their tip sites to get free wood chips.
Some tree companies list the availability of free wood chips on third-party websites, and some deliver the wood chippings to biomass processing plants, where they are converted to fuel.
Uses of Wood Chips
Suppose you got a free chip drop from a tree company. How would you use it effectively?
- For planting trees
You can use wood chippings to mulch the area around the bases of newly planted trees.
Mulch preserves moisture for longer and prevents competitive weeds from growing. This helps the tree to get enough nutrients for healthy growth.
Depth is an important factor when mulching. If you load more wood chips, there could be fungal infections as they retain moisture. If you pile a small amount of chips, weeds can grow on the ground easily.
Hence, you must fill it to the right depth. The recommended level is 4-6 inches.
Some bark mulch contain chemicals that can suppress the growth of plants. One such tree is walnut. So, don’t lay wood chippings from walnut trees around plants. However, walnut wood chippings are ideal for decorative purposes.
Another question many people have is whether wood chips will deplete nitrogen. Simply put, yes, they do absorb nitrogen from the soil for decomposition. However, this occurs only at the top layer.
So, you don’t have to worry about plants becoming nitrogen deficient. If you notice leaves becoming yellow, add some nitrogen fertiliser to the ground.
- Mulching flower beds
You can use wood chippings to mulch flower beds in early spring or summer to keep the weeds out, and in the cold season to help the shrubs better bear the cold weather. You can also use them on walkways and muddy fields at your house to reduce the wetness.
Apart from the above benefits, wood chippings will provide an aesthetic look to your flower beds and walkways.
- Used in allotments
Many gardeners use wood chippings in allotments to:
- Suppress the growth of weeds.
- On allotment pathways.
- To condition the soil.
Store the fresh wood chippings in an area of your property and add humus to it. Over time, they will decompose, and you can use them as a soil conditioner.
- For landscaping
Wood chippings are used in some equestrian areas, including children’s playgrounds, golf pathways, and horse gallops, as they are durable and not harmful to humans.
These days, chippings are produced in specific shapes and textures and they are coloured to be used for landscaping in the park, garden, and driveway.
- Used in the chicken pen and for animal breeding
Wood chippings provide a warm, absorbent bed for animals. Hence, they make good mulch for chicken pens when they get wet on rainy days or during an ice storm.
In large farms, wood chippings are mixed with additives to make them antibacterial and used as bedding for various animals, including guinea pigs, tortoises, rabbits, etc. Apart from absorbing wetness, chippings are economical for use in animal breeding.
- To produce biomass
Biomass production is an important use of chippings as it’s an eco-friendly alternative to coal, oil, and natural gas.
Did you know? According to the data from the Wood Recyclers Association, 3.1 million tonnes of waste wood are used to create biomass, which can supply electricity to one million households in the UK.
Biomass can be used for various activities, including operating machinery, cooking, and bonfires. Timber-chipping biomass burning produces less smoke which reduces pollution.
Is Wood Chip Mulch Safe for Your Plants?
If tree service trucks with chippings come to your neighbourhood, you can ask them to drop them in your yard for free.
However, some people fear these chips could spread diseases and insects. How far is this true? Are the chips from tree services safe for your plants? Let’s discuss.
Most of the trees cut by arborists are not harmful, but some trees, like walnuts, can prevent plant growth if used as mulch. Hence, you must ask those coming for chip drops about the type of trees used and whether pesticides are applied.
If pesticides are not applied and the plant chopped has any disease, it’s more likely to spread to the plants in your garden, too. However, this will happen only when you lay fresh chippings.
Usually, the chippings are left to age and dry before spreading. When chippings are left to age, the pile gets heated and kills all the pathogens. Hence, aged chippings won’t cause any diseases.
If you’re using fresh chippings, stuff them away from the root system and trunks.
Logs are habitats for certain types of bugs and insects, but they don’t survive the chipping process. So you don’t have to worry about such infestations.
To prevent insects from infesting the chippings, keep them at least 6 inches away from your house and wood sidings.
When you leave the timber chippings to age, the pile heats up, and at a certain stage, it will have a pungent smell. This is called sour mulch.
You must not add sour mulch to plants as they contain acids that could damage foliage temporarily and kill seedlings. Ensure the chippings are fully fermented before adding them to the ground.
If the chippings get wet, mould can grow on them. You must not use mouldy mulch on plants. Drop the mulch in a dry area and allow sunlight and air circulation to get rid of mould. Then, it’s safe to use.
Overall, chippings from arborists are safe to use as mulch. However, you must be careful and take the necessary precautions to prevent diseases and mould.
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Alternatives for Wood Chips
If you can’t get a good deal for timber chippings from an arborist, there are some alternatives you can try out.
Sawdust is a good alternative for chippings. Drop it at a depth of 1-1.5 inches, but don’t stuff it near tree trunks.
Sawdust decomposes very fast and absorbs nitrogen for this purpose. So, you’ll have to replenish it every year and add nitrogen fertiliser to prevent plants from becoming nitrogen deficient.
You throw a lot of waste paper every day. You can use this waste paper as mulch. Shred the papers, including newspapers, bills, sachets, etc., and fill them to a depth of 2-3 inches around the plants.
The shredded paper keeps weeds away and absorbs extra moisture. If you feel paper doesn’t look good in your garden, add some pine needles above it for aesthetics and hold down the shredded paper until it’s damp.
Shredded paper can blow away when they are not damp. Once they are damp, they form a crust and won’t blow away. So, it’s better not to lay down shredded paper on a windy day.
Leaves are another alternative for chippings. Most people sack the leaves in the garden and drop them on the curb.
If you have a truck, you can go around the neighbourhood and pick them up. You can load these leaves onto your chicken pen to reduce the muddiness caused by rain.
You can also store the rest, let it decompose, and load them onto your flower and vegetable beds during spring, summer, or fall.
Final Words
You can get wood chippings for free or at a good deal from local arborists, listing websites, and free dump sites, if there’s one in your city. There are many websites in the UK that connect arborists who want to unload their chips somewhere with people who want chips for their gardens.
Your job is to sign up with such a website for free and create a listing for your tip site. Include your contact details, and location, describe your tip site properly, and, if possible, include a photo of it. Arborists are more likely to choose your site if you offer money for the chip drop service.
You can use chips as garden mulch to promote growth, retain moisture, and prevent weed growth. They are also used to produce biomass. Follow safety precautions to get the best out of the wood chippings.
