Marking what stays and what goes
Everything an owner wants protected on a clearing job comes down to whether it was marked. Conversations are forgotten, plans are misread, and species instructions fail in full leaf — but a flagged stem is a flagged stem, visible from thirty yards, to anybody.
Published by the Land Clearing Authority editorial team · Last revised 2026-07-29 · Editorial policy · Corrections
Who this is for
- Owners retaining any trees, features, or areas
- Anyone with buried systems or boundaries near the work
- People whose site has hazards the crew cannot see
The short answer
Mark the minority. If you are keeping a few things in a cleared area, mark what stays. If you are removing a few things from a retained area, mark what goes. Either way, state clearly which convention you used.
Use different colours for different meanings, and write the key down. One colour for retention, one for removal, one for no-traffic zones, one for hazards. A single colour meaning several things is not marking.
Mark at a height and on enough sides that it reads from any approach, and re-check it the day before work starts. Tape blows off, paint fades, and growth obscures.
Then walk it with the operator who will be in the cab. That walk is where marking becomes shared understanding rather than decoration.
What changes the answer
- Whether retention is the majority or the minority
- What season the work happens in, and what is visible
- How long between marking and working
- How many separate meanings you need to convey
- Whether the crew includes people who were not at the walk
The five things worth marking
Owners mark trees and forget the rest. Four of these five are the ones that get damaged.
| What | How to mark it | Why it gets missed |
|---|---|---|
| Retained trees | Tape or paint at cab height, two or more sides | Marked too low to see from a machine |
| No-traffic zones | Stakes and tape around the whole area | Trunk protected, root zone driven over |
| Buried systems | Stakes at intervals along the run | Locate marks fade or are never made |
| Boundaries and limits of work | Markers close enough to see two at once | Assumed rather than marked |
| Hazards and features | Anything highly visible | Invisible under growth until struck |
A colour key, written down
Four colours and one piece of paper resolve most ambiguity.
Assign one colour to retention, one to removal, one to no-go and no-traffic areas, and one to hazards and buried services. Write the key on a sheet, photograph it, and give a copy to the contractor.
Then choose colours that contrast with your site in the season the work happens. Orange against autumn foliage and green against summer growth both disappear. Pink and blue read well in most conditions, and white reads well in leaf-off.
Avoid using a colour that a utility locate crew may also use, because a mark meaning two things is worse than no mark at all.
Marking at the right height
The commonest marking failure is height, and it is entirely avoidable.
An operator sits well above ground level, looking through growth, at a machine-width working distance. A ribbon tied at knee height disappears behind everything in front of it. Mark at or above the height of a seated operator, and mark the same stem on more than one side so it reads from whichever direction the machine approaches.
For no-traffic zones and boundaries, the test is being able to see two consecutive markers from any point on the line. Where you cannot, add more.
The ambiguity rule
No marking scheme is complete, because you cannot anticipate every case. What closes the gap is a rule about what happens when the crew is unsure.
Write it into the scope: where marking is unclear, absent, or contradictory, the crew stops and asks rather than deciding. Give them a number to call and expect to be called.
This is the single highest-value sentence in a marking procedure. It converts every gap in your scheme from an irreversible decision made by somebody else into a two-minute phone call.
Maintaining the marking through the job
Marking degrades, and on a job of more than a day or two that becomes material.
Tape is pulled down by the work itself. Stakes get knocked over. Paint gets obscured by dust and residue. Falling material covers markers that were visible in the morning. And the markers closest to the machine — usually the most important ones — are the most exposed.
Walk the marked features at the end of each working day and replace anything missing. Ten minutes, and it is the difference between a site that was marked and a site that is marked.
What marking cannot do
It cannot establish a boundary. Marking shows where you believe the line is; only a survey establishes where it is, and marking an assumed line simply makes the assumption more convincing.
It cannot substitute for a utility locate request, which marks registered infrastructure to a standard your tape does not.
And it cannot guarantee an outcome. A marked tree can still be lost, and a marked line can still be crossed. What marking does is remove ambiguity as a cause, which is the cause behind most of these losses.
What drives the cost
| Driver | Effect |
|---|---|
| Number of separately marked features | Each one constrains the machine and slows working |
| No-traffic zones | Protected root areas constrain travel routes |
| Marking maintenance during the job | Owner time, and stoppages where marking has failed |
| Stoppages for ambiguity | Short pauses that are far cheaper than the alternative |
| Season and visibility | Marking in full leaf needs more markers to read reliably |
Common mistakes
- Marking at knee height where an operator cannot see it
- Using one colour for several meanings
- Choosing a colour that blends with the foliage that season
- Marking the trunk and leaving the root zone unmarked
- Marking once and never checking it again
Questions to ask a contractor
- Does my marking read clearly from where you will be working?
- Where would you want additional markers?
- Which colour convention do you normally see, and does mine conflict?
- Will the operator who works this site walk the marking with me?
- Who do I speak to if marking needs adding once you have started?
What to do next
- Decide whether to mark the minority that stays or the minority that goes
- Assign four colours to four meanings and write the key down
- Mark at cab height, on multiple sides, with markers visible in pairs
- Walk it with the operator and re-check it before each working day
Questions people actually ask
Should I mark what stays or what goes?
Whichever is the minority, because that is fewer markers and fewer chances of error. State the convention explicitly, since the opposite assumption produces exactly the wrong outcome.
Is paint better than tape?
Paint lasts longer and tape is more visible and removable. Many owners use both — paint as the durable record, tape as the thing that catches the eye. On a long job the durability matters more.
Who should do the marking, me or the contractor?
You should, because you know what you want kept. The contractor can advise on visibility and on whether the scheme is workable, which is what the walk-through is for.
What if the crew removes something marked?
It cannot be undone, which is why the marking, the walk, and the ambiguity rule matter more than any remedy. Those three together are what reduce the risk to something close to zero.
Work out the scope before you ask for prices
Answer the five questions every quote depends on — what is growing, where the material goes, how deep removal has to reach, whether equipment can get in, and what the land is for afterwards. Then send one properly described project to the right kind of contractor.
Nothing on this site is a recommendation of a specific company. The guidance describes categories of work and the questions worth asking. If you decide to request quotes, the introduction is free to you, contractors may pay to receive it, and you are under no obligation to hire anyone.