Which Trees Clog Gutters the Most, and What Stops Them?

The ones right over your roof. This guide covers five: gums, jacarandas, poincianas, pines and palms. Gums hold their leaves all year, and on our jobs they drop leaf in every month. Jacarandas and poincianas drop tiny leaflets that pack down. Pines drop long needles that can mat. Palms drop fronds, flowers and fruit.

They're everywhere for a reason. Brisbane City Council (opens in a new tab) says the city has “a rich variety of trees, ranging from eucalypts to jacarandas.” Jacaranda and poinciana are both on its street tree list. So even with a bare backyard, the tree out the front can reach your gutters.

The table below sets out what each tree drops. The sizes come from herbarium and council records, and the last column is the mesh we usually start with. Whose tree it is matters only if you want it cut back. That's at the end.

Gums are evergreen. The Australian Academy of Science (opens in a new tab) puts it plainly: “eucalypts have leaves all year.” That's about the tree holding its leaves. It doesn't say when they fall. What we see on our jobs is gums dropping leaves and strips of bark in every month of the year. Gum nuts come down too.

Bark adds to the load. The Australian National Botanic Gardens (opens in a new tab) sorts eucalypt bark into two rough groups: “the persistent rough type of stringybarks, boxes, peppermints and ironbarks and shedding smooth type like brittle gums and scribbly gums.” Blue gum bark, it says, “peels in papery strips from the trunk.” At the gardens in Canberra, that's a yearly summer event.

Long bark ribbons from smooth-barked gums are the hard part. They can lie across the mesh instead of blowing off, so we look at the trees on site before we pick a mesh. Gum nuts are trouble of their own. They roll to the lowest spot in the gutter and sit where nobody sees them from the ground.

It's at its worst on the bushland edge. In The Gap, homes run up against mature eucalypt forest, with stringybarks and gums over the roofs. Chapel Hill is much the same, with big gums and stringybarks over roofs all through the older streets.

They can, because the leaf is so small. The National Herbarium of NSW (opens in a new tab) gives jacaranda leaflets as just 3 to 12 mm long and 1 to 4 mm wide. Poinciana leaflets are 5 to 10 mm long. Fine leaflet like that settles in a gutter and compacts.

Timing matters too. For NSW, the herbarium says jacaranda is “deciduous in early spring” and flowers mainly in November. Brisbane City Council's profile calls it a deciduous or evergreen tree, so it varies. Later come the woody seed capsules, up to 8 cm across. Poincianas flower in summer (opens in a new tab) and grow flat, woody pods 30 to 60 cm long.

Kenmore shows the mix. Old gardens there put poincianas, figs, jacarandas, camphor laurels and eucalypts over roofs right across the suburb. Fine leaflet compacts in the gutter, and seed pods roll down to the outlet.

Our 3 mm mesh covers most homes. Where very fine debris keeps beating it, our woven 2 mm mesh is the step up, and we make that call on site. Rather keep cleaning? Here's how often gutters under trees need it.

Pine needles are long and thin, and they can mat. Brisbane City Council's profile of slash pine (opens in a new tab), a plantation pine, gives its needles as 17.5 to 30 cm long, “grouped in twos or threes”. On our jobs, pine needles can slip through a coarse guard and knit into a mat that holds water. If very fine debris keeps beating a coarser mesh, our woven 2 mm mesh is the next step, and we check that on site.

The same profile says slash pine bark is “shed in flat discs”, and the council lists slash pine as pest vegetation. Its profile says slash pine is regarded as an environmental weed in Queensland. Makers of very fine micro mesh say it stops pine needles too. Our guide to micro mesh gutter guard compares it with what we fit.

Palms drop much bigger pieces. Take the cocos palm, also sold as the queen palm. The council's profile (opens in a new tab) says its fronds “can reach up to 5 m in length on mature trees”, and its flower clusters grow up to 2 m long. The fruit is 2.5 to 3 cm long. Brisbane City Council lists it as pest vegetation under its Natural Asset Local Law.

So if palms hang over your house, keep in mind that with leaf guard on, the roof above still needs a look now and then.

For most homes under garden gums, our expanded aluminium mesh. It's 1 mm thick with 3 mm holes, sized to stop leaves and debris while rain drains straight through. Near bushland, or where fine litter keeps beating coarser mesh, we step up to our woven EmberGuard, with finer 2 mm holes.

We only fit aluminium, on tile and metal roofs. Leaves land on the mesh, dry out and blow away instead of settling into the gutter. Worried about summer storms? Here's how mesh copes in heavy rain.

We'll match the mesh to your tree cover at the free quote. Every leaf guard install starts with a full gutter clean at no charge, and it's backed by our written 10-year no blocked gutter guarantee. You can see how our gutter guard installation works, from the quote to your written guarantees.

Talk to them first. The Queensland Government says (opens in a new tab) “you should always talk about a solution with your neighbour as a first step.” You may also have a right to cut overhanging branches back to your boundary, once you've checked the tree isn't covered by a vegetation protection order (VPO). Work up high or near the roof is a job for an arborist.

That cutting right is the common law right of abatement: “your right to remove overhanging branches and roots to your boundary line.” The VPO check matters. You can be fined for damaging a protected tree (opens in a new tab), “even if the tree is causing problems on your land.” Your council can tell you.

If talking doesn't work, there's a formal notice called Form 3. It only applies where branches overhang more than 50 cm and are less than 2.5 m above the ground, on a tree with no VPO. QCAT says (opens in a new tab) the notice gives the tree-keeper 30 days, and the government says it's at least 30 days from when they get it. If they don't act, you can have the branches removed, but QCAT says you're “not authorised to enter the tree-keeper's land.” They're liable for up to $300 a year.

Higher branches, more than 2.5 m up and hanging over by at least 0.5 m, go to QCAT for an order. But the government says normal tree litter, like leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds, “would not be classed as substantial”. So for leaves in your gutters, guard on your own gutters is the fix you control. The law counts palms as trees too.

Trimming your own trees is on the government's storm list (opens in a new tab) as well: “Trim trees and overhanging branches.” Cutting back a big tree is a job for an arborist. This is general information only. For your own case, ask your council or QCAT.