A storm front passes through, a branch snaps, and a car is parked underneath. The same question follows every time it happens: who could have seen the damage coming, and who can prove they looked? For 2025, German insurers expected 2.6 billion euros (GDV) in claims from natural hazards. In the same year the German landscaping sector turned over 11.11 billion euros (BGL), yet tree inspection appears as a named service on almost none of those companies' websites. It deserves to be one: small in effort, recurring in rhythm, and legally defined clearly enough that a good service page does half of the selling.
Key takeaways
- There is no tree inspection act. The duty is derived from the general liability for unlawful injury to protected rights (BGB) and filled in by the courts case by case.
- The Federal Court of Justice requires regular observation for dry foliage, dead branches, damage or frost cracks, plus a detailed examination wherever age, condition or position give cause for it (BGH, III ZR 352/13).
- A natural branch failure with no prior signs counts, under the same ruling, among the risks of life that have to be accepted (BGH, III ZR 352/13). What is owed is the inspection, not the absence of damage.
- The Higher Regional Court of Hamm awarded 38,027.18 euros (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20) after a tree came down, because visible decay at the base had been left without any further step.
- The FLL tree inspection rules have been the reference work for this since 2004 (FLL). They derive scope, timing and frequency from the case law and tie the interval to age, condition and location rather than to one figure for all trees.
- The record is what gets paid for: the visual check captures tree number, location, finding and measure, and the protocol is the deliverable. A service page describes that instead of promising safety; between 1 March and 30 September the felling ban applies (BNatSchG).
Why demand builds before autumn
The trigger is rarely the statute book; it is the weather forecast. As soon as the first autumn storms are announced, the owner thinks about the poplar behind the carport and the property manager about the chestnut above the playground. Of the 2025 claims, roughly 1.4 billion euros (GDV) fell on storm, hail and lightning in property insurance, with a further 700 million euros (GDV) on storms and flooding in motor insurance. Each of those files ends with the same question from the loss adjuster: who was responsible, and what is documented?
The second source of enquiries is the public sector. 21.23 per cent (BGL) of the sector's turnover came from public contracts in 2025, while private gardens remained the largest client segment at close to 57 per cent (BGL), or 6.32 billion euros (BGL). Municipalities, housing companies and property managers tender tree inspection on a schedule, because what they need is the record. Anyone who wants to appear on those lists has to make it visible on their own site that inspection is run as a service, not as a by-product of maintenance.
For the company, inspection has an appeal that felling does not: it is small, plannable and recurring. An inspection round ties up no machine, no skip and no crew, only one qualified person with a clipboard, binoculars and a sounding rod. It fits into weeks when sites are stalled by weather, and it produces a list of measures the same company may then carry out. How that turns into an annual contract follows the pattern described for grounds maintenance contracts with housing companies.
Three related topics that belong apart
The legal basis: one provision and many rulings
There is no tree inspection act. The duty is derived from general tort law: liable for damages is anyone who, in the wording of the German Civil Code, „vorsätzlich oder fahrlässig das Leben, den Körper, die Gesundheit, die Freiheit, das Eigentum oder ein sonstiges Recht eines anderen widerrechtlich verletzt“, that is, intentionally or negligently injures another person's life, body, health, freedom, property or other right (BGB). From that single provision the courts have built the duty of care over decades: whoever creates or maintains a source of danger has to take the reasonable precautions so that others come to no harm. A tree beside a road, above a footpath or on a playground is such a source.
How far the precaution has to go was summarised by the Federal Court of Justice in a case from Thuringia. Authorities satisfy their duty, in a translation of the court's wording, when apart from the observation of dry foliage, dead branches, damage or frost cracks that is called for at regular intervals, they carry out a detailed examination wherever particular circumstances, such as the age of the tree, its state of preservation, the peculiarity of its position or its static structure, make that appear advisable to a discerning observer (BGH, III ZR 352/13). That one sentence contains both stages of the service: the recurring visual check and the examination triggered by cause.
The limit drawn by the same ruling matters just as much. A natural branch failure for which no particular signs existed beforehand belongs, even in species more prone to it, among the nature-bound risks of life that have to be accepted (BGH, III ZR 352/13). What the inspecting company owes is therefore the professional inspection and its documentation, not the absence of every incident. That distinction belongs on the service page, because it sorts out the client's expectations before the first storm arrives.
Private owners
Owners are responsible for the trees on their land, even where the tree was planted long before their time. Enquiries typically arrive after a storm in the neighbourhood, ahead of a sale, or when the building insurer asks questions after a claim. Decisions come quickly, the scope is small, and the value sits in the record.
Municipalities and public bodies
Street trees, cemeteries, school yards and parks fall to the local authority. Both rulings quoted here concern municipal trees. Public clients enquire in a structured way, ask for evidence of qualification and work with tree registers into which the contractor feeds its findings.
Property and block managers
Managers carry the duty for shared areas and have to evidence it to owners' meetings and insurers. What counts here is repeatability: the same method, the same structure of record, the same contact person. This is the classic entry point into a multi-year maintenance contract.
Businesses with their own grounds
Customer car parks, works entrances, campsites, clinics and hotels carry a raised safety expectation, because many people move through them who do not know the place. These clients rarely buy the single inspection round; they buy the assurance that someone with a name and a qualification looks at the trees on a schedule.
The duty can be passed to a specialist company by contract, but it does not disappear in the process: a responsibility to select and supervise stays with the party passing it on. What that means in a specific contract depends on its wording and belongs in legal review before signing. On the website the phrasing is therefore restrained: the company takes on the performance and documentation of the inspection, not the release of the owner from responsibility.
Routine check, additional check, detailed examination
The professional reference is the FLL tree inspection rules, published by the German research society for landscape development and landscaping. Tree owners are obliged to ensure the traffic safety of their trees, the publisher writes (FLL), and the work has been the reference for inspections verifying the safety of trees since 2004 (FLL). The third edition appeared in 2020. It provides a set of rules that, on the basis of the case law of the Federal Court of Justice, defines the scope, timing and frequency of tree inspections and creates clarity for client and contractor (FLL). That clarity is what the company sells along with the round.
| Stage | What happens | What triggers it |
|---|---|---|
| Routine check | Professionally qualified visual inspection from the ground for health and stability, without elaborate equipment (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20) | Recurring at an interval derived from age, condition and location (FLL) |
| Additional check | An extra round outside the schedule, usually in the opposite foliage state to the routine check | Storm, heavy rain, excavation in the root zone, a report from a resident |
| Detailed examination | Expert examination, in part with a lifting platform or a measuring device such as a fractometer (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20) | Concrete defect symptoms found during the routine check, or particular circumstances such as age and state of preservation (BGH, III ZR 352/13) |
| Measure | Deadwood removal, crown reduction, crown bracing, felling as the last stage | The result of the examination, with a deadline and a named responsible party in the record |
| Follow-up | A new inspection date, where appropriate a shortened interval for the tree concerned | The finding from the last inspection, a changed use of the area |
This staging matters for the sale, because it breaks the offer into steps. The routine check is the inexpensive, recurring base service with a clear price per tree. The detailed examination is the expensive exception that only arises on a finding. Separating the two on the page removes the client's worry about starting with an open-ended budget, and at the same time creates the justification for the follow-up order.
How often, and why no single figure fits every tree
The most common question in a first conversation is the interval, and it has no blanket answer. The Higher Regional Court of Hamm restated the widely held view that the party bearing the duty carries out a professionally qualified external visual inspection of the tree for health and stability twice a year from the ground and without equipment, with binoculars as the only exception for particularly tall crowns (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20). In the same ruling the court refers to the FLL table, under which even for more heavily damaged trees in the ageing phase between 50 and 80 years, and even where the public's safety expectation is raised, a routine check once a year is required (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20).
The two statements do not contradict each other; together they show the frame. The rulebook ties the interval to the development phase, the condition and the location with its safety expectation, not to a number that holds for every tree. A young tree in a courtyard, a damaged old beech above a school route and a row of poplars along a field road therefore end up in different rhythms. On the website the honest wording is the stronger one: the interval is set and justified per tree on the first round, instead of asserting a deadline the source does not support.
- The development phase of the tree, from youth through maturity to the ageing phase.
- Condition: a healthy tree, visible prior damage, or a measure already running from an earlier inspection.
- Location and safety expectation: field track, residential street, customer car park, playground, school entrance.
- Species and its known susceptibility to breakage, decay or fungal attack.
- Events since the last inspection: storm, excavation in the root zone, raised ground level, a change in how the area is used.
- The client's documentation position, that is, whether a register with earlier findings exists at all.
These six points belong visibly on the service page, because they do two jobs at once. They explain to the client why nobody can responsibly quote a price per tree over the phone without having seen the site. And they qualify the enquiry in advance, because the prospect gathers the details while filling in the form. The principle is the same as with an enquiry form that qualifies.
What the visual check records
Professionally, the routine check rests on an established procedure. The VTA method, visual tree assessment, known since 1991, has proven itself, the court noted; under it trees are examined during the visual check specifically for suspicious biological and mechanical defect symptoms (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20). The round follows a fixed order from the bottom up: surroundings and ground conditions, root collar and buttress roots, trunk, crown base, crown. Showing that order on the page turns an invisible walk into a service the client can follow.
What counts as a finding was named by the court as well. A detailed expert examination is only required once concrete defect symptoms are visible on the tree during the routine check, such as sparse and dry foliage, dead branches, external injuries, growth anomalies or fungal attack (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20). In the case decided, decay was visible at the base of one stem without any further step following; the court awarded the injured party 38,027.18 euros (OLG Hamm, 11 U 34/20).
What the visual check can do and what it cannot
This restraint is not a competitive disadvantage; with property managers and public bodies it is a selling point. Describing where the method ends reads as more expert than offering blanket safety. The same effect is familiar from an honest account of warranty in landscaping: a clear boundary creates trust in everything inside it.
The record is the deliverable that gets paid for
The client is not buying a walk around the site; they are buying a file they can produce if the worst happens. Neither of the two cases quoted here turned on whether somebody had passed the tree, but on what was written down and what followed from it. A record with no finding is valuable, a finding with no deadline is dangerous, and an inspection round with no record does not exist in a dispute. That is the sales logic of the whole service, and it belongs in the first section of the page.
- Tree number, species, location with coordinate or parcel, girth and estimated height.
- Date, time, weather and foliage state at the moment of inspection.
- Name and qualification of the inspecting person, with a signature or digital equivalent.
- Finding per zone: surroundings, root collar and buttress roots, trunk, crown base, crown.
- Recommended measure with urgency and deadline, kept separate from the question of who carries it out.
- The next inspection date with the reasoning behind the chosen interval.
Six fields sound unspectacular, but they are the difference between a note and a piece of evidence. Showing this structure on the website answers the prospect's real question, namely whether they will hold something after the appointment. A sample record as an image or an anonymised extract works harder than any description, much like a well-sorted portfolio gallery with real photographs.
{
"trigger": "storm damage on the neighbouring property",
"siteType": "residential block with playground and parking",
"treeCount": 47,
"speciesKnown": ["pedunculate oak", "horse chestnut", "Norway maple"],
"lastInspection": "2024-10",
"lastInspectionDocumented": false,
"registerExists": false,
"safetyExpectation": "raised, playground and footpath",
"accessForLift": "gate 3.10 m, lawn passable",
"knownFindings": ["deadwood", "fungal bodies at the root collar"],
"documentsWanted": ["record per tree", "list of measures with deadlines"],
"decisionMaker": "property management"
}A form with these fields separates the serious enquiry from the price survey before anyone gets in the van. The question about the last documented inspection is a particularly good filter: whoever answers it with a date has a register and needs a partner to continue it. Whoever leaves it blank needs an initial survey first, and that is the larger job. What happens after the form is sent decides the conversion rate and is set out in the article on what happens after the enquiry.
What belongs on the service page
The page does not open with the company history but with the reader's situation: a tree, an area where people move about, and the question of evidence. Then the legal position in three sentences with the citations, then the staging from routine check to measure, then the record, then the process with dates, and finally the price frame. That order matches the order in which a property manager thinks, and it is the reason such pages are rewarded with long dwell times.
Two elements are missing almost everywhere. The first is qualification: who carries out the inspection, what training stands behind it and how often it is refreshed belongs on the page with the name of the role, not in a PDF near the imprint. The second is the boundary with the expert witness: the specialist company inspects and documents, while a report for court proceedings is a different service. Separating the two cleanly means fewer enquiries that have to be turned down. How detailed the evidence section should be is shown in the article on certificates and insurance on the website.
The price frame may go on the page, but it should mirror the structure instead of asserting one figure: price per tree for the routine check with a volume scale, a flat rate for travel, an hourly rate for the detailed examination, a surcharge for register work and initial survey. Which details are legally required depends on the form of advertising and is described in the article on advertising with prices and claims. Naming no order of magnitude at all loses the property managers who have to collect three quotes.
Language: describe, do not promise
No company can pledge that a tree will stay standing. The Federal Court of Justice expressly assigned the natural branch failure without prior signs to the risks of life that have to be accepted (BGH, III ZR 352/13); a safety pledge on the website would therefore promise more than the law itself requires, and would be open to challenge under competition law at the same time. The workable wording describes activity and deliverable: what is inspected, by which method, by whom, and what the client holds afterwards.
In practice that turns "we keep your trees safe" into "we inspect your stock by an established method and document every tree individually". It turns "legally watertight" into "with a record, deadlines and a named responsible party". This language sounds drier and sells better, because it can be checked. The same principle applies to the whole website and is set out in the article on writing text customers understand.
Felling seasons and safety interlock
A finding in spring runs into a protection period. Federal nature conservation law prohibits cutting back, coppicing or removing trees outside woodland, short-rotation plantations and horticulturally used areas, along with hedges, living fences, shrubs and other woody plants, between 1 March and 30 September (BNatSchG). Gentle shaping and maintenance cuts to remove the season's growth or to keep trees healthy remain permitted during that period.
For duty of care the same provision contains an exception: the prohibitions do not apply to measures that cannot be carried out in another way or at another time in the public interest, where they are carried out by an authority, are authorised by an authority, or serve to ensure traffic safety (BNatSchG). The exception therefore does not cover every summer cut; it calls for a justification in the individual case as to why the measure could neither be postponed nor solved differently. A dated inspection record with a finding and a deadline supplies exactly that justification. Municipal tree protection by-laws may apply on top; the article on tree protection and felling seasons places this interplay in context, while assessing a specific case remains a task for a lawyer.
From the one-off job to recurring work
131,746 people (BGL) worked in German landscaping companies in 2025. The number of companies running tree inspection as a named service of its own is a fraction of that, and that gap is the opening ahead of the autumn storm season. The route from the first inspection round to an annual contract is short, provided it is laid out that way from the start.
Price the initial survey separately
The first pass costs more than any that follow, because numbering, positioning, species identification and girth are all recorded from scratch. Showing that openly instead of hiding it turns the lower follow-up price into an argument rather than a discount.
Justify the interval per tree
The initial survey ends with a proposal for each tree on when the next round makes sense, reasoned from age, condition and location. The client can then see for themselves that a blanket deadline for the whole stock does not fit the case.
Offer measures separately
Deadwood removal, crown reduction and safety cuts come as their own quote with a deadline. Separating inspection from execution removes the suspicion that the inspection invents work, and with public clients it is a requirement in any case.
Automate the follow-up
The record produces a date in the company's own calendar, not an obligation on the client to remember. A letter six weeks before the round falls due brings work into weeks that are otherwise quiet, and it is the core of the recurring business.
The first pass costs more than any that follow, because numbering, positioning, species identification and girth are all recorded from scratch. Showing that openly instead of hiding it turns the lower follow-up price into an argument rather than a discount.
The initial survey ends with a proposal for each tree on when the next round makes sense, reasoned from age, condition and location. The client can then see for themselves that a blanket deadline for the whole stock does not fit the case.
Deadwood removal, crown reduction and safety cuts come as their own quote with a deadline. Separating inspection from execution removes the suspicion that the inspection invents work, and with public clients it is a requirement in any case.
The record produces a date in the company's own calendar, not an obligation on the client to remember. A letter six weeks before the round falls due brings work into weeks that are otherwise quiet, and it is the core of the recurring business.
Inspection does not stand alone in the year; it sits between the other seasonal services. Linking the pages to one another walks the prospect from one enquiry to the next: from inspection to the autumn work on your website, from there to garden lighting for the dark months, and in spring to remodelling work such as accessible gardens for older clients.
Whoever documents gets the call before the storm
Common mistakes on a tree inspection page
Most pages fail not on a lack of expertise but because they treat the service as a maintenance line item. Six patterns turn up particularly often.
- Inspection appears as a bullet under tree care instead of a page of its own with its own heading and its own form.
- The legal basis is asserted but not cited, so the reader cannot look the statement up.
- A fixed inspection deadline is presented as a statutory duty, although the rulebook ties the interval to age, condition and location.
- Safety is pledged instead of activity and deliverable being described, which is legally exposed and professionally unconvincing.
- The record stays invisible, although it is the actual product and could be shown as a sample.
- There is no form asking for tree count, location, last inspection and access, so every enquiry starts with three follow-up questions.
Clearing those six points produces a page that property managers find, read and forward. The structural frame for it is set out in the article on structuring a landscaping website; the build itself, with service page, form and evidence section, is what we deliver with the website for landscaping companies.
Sources and studies
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